Monday, March 26, 2007

SCTP as a game transport protocol

Last fall, Dr. Ilmi Yoon kindly let me present some research I had done regarding the SCTP protocol to her CSc 631 Multiplayer Game Development class at SFSU. The slides (ppt) and handout (doc) from that presentation are online.

To keep the talk topical, the presentation first covered the pros and cons of both UDP and TCP in the context of online games, specifically MMORPGs. Then I explained the features of SCTP and how those features related to those of UDP and TCP. Finally, I presented research showing how SCTP's performance characteristics were favorable to traffic similar to that of current MMORPGs. Most of the numbers presented come from third-party research papers, so the fact that I have never worked in the game industry shouldn't detract from the relevancy.

In case anyone finds them useful, I also have my research notes (doc) for the presentation online. These consist of short summaries of most of the RFCs and academic papers I consulted in my research. I won't vouch for their quality, though, as they were never intended for public consumption. I just used them to make sure I properly cited my sources.

Update 2007/03/28: I put HTML versions of the PowerPoint slides online.

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