TCP/IP illustrated (vol. 2): the implementation
TCP/IP illustrated (vol. 2): the implementation
Networked virtual environments: design and implementation
Networked virtual environments: design and implementation
Packet reordering is not pathological network behavior
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
Proceedings of 3rd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
A traffic characterization of popular on-line games
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
RTP/I-toward a common application level protocol for distributedinteractive media
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia
Playability heuristics for mobile multi-player games
Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Digital interactive media in entertainment and arts
SIGMETRICS '08 Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems
Quantifying the effect of content-based transport strategies for online role playing games
Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games
Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games
An adaptive approach to granular real-time anomaly detection
EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing - Special issue on signal processing applications in network intrusion detection systems
Stabilizing transport dynamics of control channels over wide-area networks
Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
The delay-friendliness of TCP for real-time traffic
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
Traffic modeling of player action categories in a MMORPG
Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
A ubiquitous solution for location-aware games
ICEC'12 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Entertainment Computing
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A fundamental design question to ask in the development of a network game is---Which transport protocol should be used---TCP, UDP, or some other protocols? Seeking an objective answer to the choice of communication protocol for MMORPGs, we assess whether TCP, a popular choice, is suitable for MMORPGs based on empirical evidence. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first evaluation of transport protocol performance using real-life game traces.We analyze a 1, 356-million-packet trace from ShenZhou Online, a TCP-based, commercial, mid-sized MMORPG. Our analysis indicates that TCP is unwieldy and inappropriate for MMORPGs. This is due to four distinctive characteristics of MMORPG traffic: 1) tiny packets, 2) low packet rate, 3) application-limited traffic generation, and 4) bidirectional traffic. We show that because TCP was originally designed for unidirectional and network-limited bulk data transfers, it cannot adapt well to MMORPG traffic. In particular, the window-based congestion control and the fast retransmit algorithm for loss recovery are ineffective. Furthermore, TCP is overkill, as not every game packet needs to be transmitted in a reliably and orderly manner. We also show that the degraded network performance did impact users' willingness to continue a game. Finally, we discuss guidelines in designing transport protocols for online games.