Abstract
This paper studies the feasibility of using an optimization method, based on multiplexing and header compression, for the traffic of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) using TCP at the Transport Layer. Different scenarios where a number of flows share a common network path are identified. The adaptation of the multiplexing method is explained, and a formula of the savings is devised. The header compression ratio is obtained using real traces of a popular game and a statistical model of its traffic is used to obtain the bandwidth saving as a function of the number of players and the multiplexing period. The obtained savings can be up to 60 % for IPv4 and 70 % for IPv6. A Mean Opinion Score model from the literature is employed to calculate the limits of the multiplexing period that can be used without harming the user experience. The interactions between multiplexed and non-multiplexed flows, sharing a bottleneck with different kinds of background traffic, are studied through simulations. As a result of the tests, some limits for the multiplexing period are recommended: the unfairness between players can be low if the value of the multiplexing period is kept under 10 or 20 ms. TCP background flows using SACK (Selective Acknowledgment) and Reno yield better results, in terms of fairness, than Tahoe and New Reno. When UDP is used for background traffic, high values of the multiplexing period may stress the unfairness between flows if network congestion is severe.
Highlights
In the last years we are witnessing the rise of a set of emerging real-time services that use the Internet for the delivery of interactive multimedia applications, as videoconferencing, telemedicine, video vigilance, online gaming, etc
The competence between Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) flows affected by different latencies was studied in [29] showing that, the throughput is not affected, the overall Round Trip Time (RTT) and the retransmission rate become worse for the flows experiencing a higher delay
The average session duration of MMORPG is longer than the one in FPS [22], and long-term flows are good for header compression, since all the packets of a flow have the same value for many fields (IP addresses, ports, etc.)
Summary
In the last years we are witnessing the rise of a set of emerging real-time services that use the Internet for the delivery of interactive multimedia applications, as videoconferencing, telemedicine, video vigilance, online gaming, etc. The global traffic of some of these services may present a degree of unpredictability, with the consequence of traffic surges appearing at certain moments (e.g., the release of a new game or new content of an existing one) or places (e.g., instant messaging during a sports event, a concert, etc.). There is a need for mechanisms providing a degree of flexibility, in order to make the networks able to manage these unexpected traffic variations Between these mechanisms, traffic optimization based on header compression and multiplexing can be effective when the service sends high rates of small payloads. We will first review the different techniques for optimizing small-packet services, and explain the specific problems arising when TCP-based traffic flows are compressed and multiplexed
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