An empirical evaluation of TCP performance in online games

A fundamental design question to ask in the development of a network game is—Which transport protocol should be used—TCP, UDP, or some other protocols? Seeking an objective answer to the choice of communication protocol for MMORPGs, we assess whether TCP, a popular choice, is suitable for MMORPGs based on empirical evidence. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first evaluation of transport protocol performance using real-life game traces. We analyze a 1, 356-million-packet trace from ShenZhou Online, a TCP-based, commercial, mid-sized MMORPG. Our analysis indicates that TCP is unwieldy and inappropriate for MMORPGs. This is due to four distinctive characteristics of MMORPG traffic: 1) tiny packets, 2) low packet rate, 3) application-limited traffic generation, and 4) bidirectional traffic. We show that because TCP was originally designed for unidirectional and network-limited bulk data transfers, it cannot adapt well to MMORPG traffic. In particular, the window-based c...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ACMACE
• Authors: Kuan-Ta Chen, Chun-Ying Huang, Polly Huang, Chin-Laung Lei
• Keywords: ACMACE 2006, Is—Which Transport Protocol, MMORPG Traffic, Transport Protocols