Article

Dissecting server-discovery traffic patterns generated by multiplayer first person shooter games

Authors:

Sebastian Zander,

Grenville ArmitageAuthors Info & Claims

NetGames '05: Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games

Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/1103599.1103620

Published: 10 October 2005 Publication History

Abstract

We study the 'background traffic' resulting from tens of thousands of networked first person shooter (FPS) clients searching for servers on which to play. Networked, multiplayer games utilise the network in two distinct ways. Game play is typically built around a client-server communication model, and the resulting traffic patterns have been well studied to date. However, the discovery of available game servers is itself a client-server process. Operational game servers register themselves with well-known 'master servers', which are then queried by game clients looking for available servers. Game clients then probe the servers and retrieve information such as game type, number of other players, currently active map, and latency (ping time). We instrumented two active and public "Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory" servers over 20 weeks, developed a simple method to differentiate client probes from game-play traffic, and then characterized and contrasted the time-of-day, geographical distributions and traffic characteristics of both traffic types. We find that a significant amount of a server's traffic is probe traffic and the geographical origins are very different for both types of traffic. We propose techniques to improve server location and to decrease the amount of probe traffic.

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Cited By

Armitage G(2018)Discovering First Person Shooter game servers online: techniques and challengesInternational Journal of Advanced Media and Communication10.1504/IJAMC.2008.0222232:4(402-414)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1504/IJAMC.2008.022223
Zander SMurray D(2017)Share or Not: Investigating the Presence of Large-Scale Address Sharing in the Internet2017 IEEE 42nd Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN)10.1109/LCN.2017.85(243-251)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/LCN.2017.85
Armitage GHeyde A(2012)REEDACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications10.1145/2168996.21690008:2(1-21)Online publication date: 22-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2168996.2169000
Show More Cited By

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Dissecting server-discovery traffic patterns generated by multiplayer first person shooter games

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cover image ACM Other conferences

NetGames '05: Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games

October 2005

164 pages

ISBN:1595931562

DOI:10.1145/1103599

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 10 October 2005

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NETGAMES05

NETGAMES05: 4th Workshop on Network and System Support for Games

October 10 - 11, 2005

NY, Hawthorne

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Cited By

Armitage G(2018)Discovering First Person Shooter game servers online: techniques and challengesInternational Journal of Advanced Media and Communication10.1504/IJAMC.2008.0222232:4(402-414)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1504/IJAMC.2008.022223
Zander SMurray D(2017)Share or Not: Investigating the Presence of Large-Scale Address Sharing in the Internet2017 IEEE 42nd Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN)10.1109/LCN.2017.85(243-251)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/LCN.2017.85
Armitage GHeyde A(2012)REEDACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications10.1145/2168996.21690008:2(1-21)Online publication date: 22-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2168996.2169000
Rossi MBranch PArmitage GKrasic CLi K(2011)Inferring the time-zones of prefixes and autonomous systems by monitoring game server discovery trafficProceedings of the 21st international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video10.1145/1989240.1989258(69-74)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1989240.1989258
Armitage G(2010)At the Intersection of Networks and Highly Interactive Online GamesAlgorithms for Next Generation Networks10.1007/978-1-84882-765-3_17(403-434)Online publication date: 20-Jan-2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-765-3_17
Zander SArmitage GBranch P(2009)Reliable transmission over covert channels in first person shooter multiplayer games2009 IEEE 34th Conference on Local Computer Networks10.1109/LCN.2009.5355205(169-176)Online publication date: Oct-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/LCN.2009.5355205
Lee YAgarwal SButcher CPadhye J(2008)Measurement and estimation of network QoS among peer Xbox 360 game playersProceedings of the 9th international conference on Passive and active network measurement10.5555/1791949.1791956(41-50)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1791949.1791956
Lee YAgarwal SButcher CPadhye J(2008)Measurement and Estimation of Network QoS Among Peer Xbox 360 Game PlayersPassive and Active Network Measurement10.1007/978-3-540-79232-1_5(41-50)Online publication date: 2008
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79232-1_5
Armitage G(2007)A Packet Arrival Model for Wolfenstein Enemy Territory Online Server Discovery Traffic2007 15th IEEE International Conference on Networks10.1109/ICON.2007.4444057(31-36)Online publication date: Nov-2007
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICON.2007.4444057
But JWilliams NZander SStewart LArmitage GCheok AIshibashi Y(2006)Automated network games enhancement layerProceedings of 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games10.1145/1230040.1230073(9-es)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1230040.1230073
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