Technical Report on Gaming over the Internet. Some advice?

Adren

Hi there,
I am doing a Networks and Data Communications module in my H.Dip, and I choose 'Gaming over the internet' as a topic to write a technical report. However I have never written one before, let alone Networking!

I have been thinking on focusing on 'latency', how it is caused, why it is something that it is not wanted, and some ways of fixing it.

Do you think this would be sufficient?
Could someone suggest a way of planning this out in relation to 'sections' and 'topic headings'? I just can't get a clear plan in my head to get me going, I'm all muddled up.

Also, A technical question.

Am I correct in saying things like 'Lag Compensation' 'Client Side Prediction' are all 'Application Layer' on the OSI Model? Are these things what the 'Game Networking Engine' achieve?

And things like whether to use UDP/TCP are on the Transport Layer? It is at this layer that the actual delay happens am I correct? Because if it is TCP, it has to resend the packets, which is why most high paced multiplayer games choose UDP.

Would I mention about the quality of the Physical Layer also I wonder?

Thanks a million for your help! It would be a massive favour!

ED E

Sounds like you're biting off way more than you can chew.

Your institution should have assigned you a mentor or have you under a lecturer thats meant to guide you in things like this 1:1.

Adren

Yea, I was thinking as much. It seemed very much, off you go there now, just go do that there.. It's worth 10 percent of the whole module as well, but it is only meant to be 1500 words.

Just wondering, if covering mentioned topics above in their a sensible order might be enough?

We are even meant to do a "lit review" but sure a grounding about the info in most of the papers, would take a semester I feel. Anyways..

My main layout at the moment that I am thinking of going with is..

Lit Review - Read the collected papers on networking gaming, and focus on latency when writing this sections, what have they said, what have they suggested.

Main section - Discuss latency divided into these headings.
-Routing [Network Layer]
-UDP/TCP [Transport Layer]
-'Netcode' Things like Interpolation, Lag Compensation

Conclusions


The thing is if my main section is just going through explaining how these different aspects affect latency, is that really a report? And if my lit report is all ready filled with these terms, am I not doing things the wrong way around. Like should I not go over all the basics first and then get into the literature that is out there discussing them. Sigh.. This is stressing me out.

ThisRegard

Are there other topics that you may be more comfortable with? For your own sake you might be better picking one if so.

salamanca22

This is way too broad a subject for a 1500 word report. I could write 1500 words on lag compensation alone.

I would pick a topic under the umbrella of game networking or another topic altogether.

Edit: Perhaps you could research and do a report on why you would use UDP over TCP in an FPS game. You are dead right there and you can easily get 1500 words out of it.

I use TCP in one of my games (Which isn't a fast paced fps game) and have come upon some issues, it is definitely worth ivestigating.

Adren

Hey thanks for your replies!

The thing is even if there were other topics that I would be more comfortable with, maybe, network topologies? Is that the requirement for the assignment is to investigate a specific area of that topic, which really is where the problem is, because the more specific we get, the more specialised the knowledge required is, and for a person who has never done networking before, that seems like quite the ask. Perhaps I'm wrong on that though.

Salamanca, I think you might be onto something, perhaps I will just focus on UDP and TCP

Cuddlesworth

Adren wrote: »

Hey thanks for your replies!

The thing is even if there were other topics that I would be more comfortable with, maybe, network topologies? Is that the requirement for the assignment is to investigate a specific area of that topic, which really is where the problem is, because the more specific we get, the more specialised the knowledge required is, and for a person who has never done networking before, that seems like quite the ask. Perhaps I'm wrong on that though.

Salamanca, I think you might be onto something, perhaps I will just focus on UDP and TCP

You could take a look at what Riot games did, they built their own backbone L2 network Globally to reduce latency. The client geolocates the users, points them at the nearest gateway into their MPLS network, then they travel across a mainly L2 system with Guaranteed bandwidth. Its pretty much the only way to try remove latency outside of moving the server closer.

http://bgp.he.net/AS6507#_asinfo
http://bgp.he.net/AS62830#_asinfo

ED E

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

You could take a look at what Riot games did, they built their own backbone L2 network Globally to reduce latency. The client geolocates the users, points them at the nearest gateway into their MPLS network, then they travel across a mainly L2 system with Guaranteed bandwidth. Its pretty much the only way to try remove latency outside of moving the server closer.

http://bgp.he.net/AS6507#_asinfo
http://bgp.he.net/AS62830#_asinfo

I wasn't aware they'd done that, must have a read. Cheers for the info.

Cuddlesworth

I don't think they have much online about it, I was interested in applying but they were not hiring in Ireland for network engineering roles. It's pretty impressive for a gaming company to hire and build out a regionalised MPLS network to reduce network congestion and reduce latency. Although that's becoming almost a requirement in the US at this point with them ignoring their POP's.