Enhanced mirrored servers for network games

The Mirrored Server (MS) architecture uses multiple mirrored servers across multiple locations to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck in the Client/Server (C/S) architecture. Each mirror receives and multicasts player updates to the others, simulates the game, and disseminates the new game state to p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Webb, Steven, Soh, Sieteng, Lau, William
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25917
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author Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
Lau, William
author_facet Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
Lau, William
author_sort Webb, Steven
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The Mirrored Server (MS) architecture uses multiple mirrored servers across multiple locations to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck in the Client/Server (C/S) architecture. Each mirror receives and multicasts player updates to the others, simulates the game, and disseminates the new game state to players. However, keeping the game state consistent between mirrors in the presence of network delay, and maintaining game responsiveness requires each server in MS to simulate the game multiple times for each game update, and additional times in the event of costly rollbacks. In this paper we propose the Enhanced Mirrored Server (EMS) architecture. Like in the Peer-to-Peer architecture, EMS allows peers to exchange updates directly, resulting in a higher tolerance to delay at the mirrors. We propose using bucket synchronization in the mirrors so that each server in EMS simulates the game only once for each update and does not require rollbacks. The server disseminates updates to clients only in the event of inconsistency, and thus its outgoing bandwidth is lower than in MS. Our EMS uses cryptographic techniques to provide security equivalent to C/S, and prevents the timestamp cheat possible in MS. Our analytical analysis and simulations show the advantages of EMS over MS.
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format Conference Paper
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publishDate 2007
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-259172019-02-19T05:35:34Z Enhanced mirrored servers for network games Webb, Steven Soh, Sieteng Lau, William - peer-to-peer mirrored servers MMOG Architecture cheating client/server The Mirrored Server (MS) architecture uses multiple mirrored servers across multiple locations to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck in the Client/Server (C/S) architecture. Each mirror receives and multicasts player updates to the others, simulates the game, and disseminates the new game state to players. However, keeping the game state consistent between mirrors in the presence of network delay, and maintaining game responsiveness requires each server in MS to simulate the game multiple times for each game update, and additional times in the event of costly rollbacks. In this paper we propose the Enhanced Mirrored Server (EMS) architecture. Like in the Peer-to-Peer architecture, EMS allows peers to exchange updates directly, resulting in a higher tolerance to delay at the mirrors. We propose using bucket synchronization in the mirrors so that each server in EMS simulates the game only once for each update and does not require rollbacks. The server disseminates updates to clients only in the event of inconsistency, and thus its outgoing bandwidth is lower than in MS. Our EMS uses cryptographic techniques to provide security equivalent to C/S, and prevents the timestamp cheat possible in MS. Our analytical analysis and simulations show the advantages of EMS over MS. 2007 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25917 10.1145/1326257.1326278 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fulltext
spellingShingle - peer-to-peer
mirrored servers
MMOG
Architecture
cheating
client/server
Webb, Steven
Soh, Sieteng
Lau, William
Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title_full Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title_fullStr Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title_full_unstemmed Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title_short Enhanced mirrored servers for network games
title_sort enhanced mirrored servers for network games
topic - peer-to-peer
mirrored servers
MMOG
Architecture
cheating
client/server
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25917