Tom Jehaes
ABSTRACT
The end-to-end delay (also referred to as latency) experienced by gaming users has a significant impact on the quality of online games. In this paper we concentrate on the delay introduced in access networks. This access network delay depends on the access technology used, the network load, the link rate configured on the access links (also referred to as the last mile link) and the size of the packets generated by the games. We characterize this access network delay by means of measurements. First, we focus on this delay in actually deployed access networks: dial-up, cable and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) access. In these access networks the access network delay shoots up as soon as the gaming user (or somebody else on the user's home network) saturates the user's last mile link with traffic generated by applications (e.g. web browser) other than the games. Therefore, we also characterize the access network delay in a laboratory set-up of a QoS-enabled ADSL network. In this set-up we show that it is possible to (logically) segregate the game traffic from the other traffic to such an extent that the game packets are not excessively delayed while at the same time a large part of the link capacity can be consumed by the other traffic.
- J. Blow, "A Look at Latency", Game developer, 5(7), pp. 28--40, July 1998.Google Scholar
- S. Cheshire, "Latency and the Quest for Interactivity", 1996. http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/LatencyQuest.psGoogle Scholar
- J. Färber, "Network Game Traffic Modelling", Proceedings of NetGames2002, pp. 74--78, Braunschweig (BRD), 16--17 April 2002.Google Scholar
- T. Henderson, "Latency and User Behaviour on a Multiplayer Games Server", Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Networked Group Communication (NGC01), pp. 1--13, London (UK), Nov. 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S.K. Joyce, "Traffic on the Internet - a study of Internet Games", Network Analysis Times, Vol. 2(1), pp. 6--8, April 2001. http://wand.cs.waikato.ac.nz/wand/publications/sarah-420.pdfGoogle Scholar
- C. Schäfer, T. Enderes, H. Ritter, M. Zitterbart, "Subjective Quality Assessment for Multiplayer Real-Time Games", Proceedings of NetGames02, pp. 74--78, Braunschweig (BRD), 16--17 April 2002. Google ScholarDigital Library
- "The Online Game Market 2002", DFC Intelligence report, 2002. http://www.dfcint.com/game report/Online_Game_toc.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Ethereal capturing tool http://www.ethereal.com/Google Scholar
- Microsoft's Xbox http://www.microsoft.com/xbox, http://www.xbox.comGoogle Scholar
- Nintendo's Gamecube http://www.gamecube.com/Google Scholar
- Sony's Playstation 2 http://www.playstation2.com/Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Access network delay in networked games
Recommendations
How much delay is there really in current games?
MMSys '15: Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems ConferenceAll computer games present some delay between human input and results being displayed on the screen, even when no networking is involved. A well-balanced discussion of delay-tolerance levels in computer games requires an understanding of how much delay ...
Power-saving scheduling with a QoS guarantee in a mobile WiMAX system
This paper presents a power-saving scheduling scheme to improve energy efficiency and guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) in Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), i.e. IEEE 802.16e. Due to the popularization of multimedia ...
Wireless Fair Intelligent Admission Control -- WFIAC
AINA '13: Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and ApplicationsIn next generation wireless networks like WiMAX, a dynamic Call Admission Control (CAC) plays an important role to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) of existing users and to efficiently utilize network resources. We propose a predictive CAC namely Wireless ...
Comments