The document discusses the characteristics of network traffic generated by online games. Some key points are: 1) Counter-Strike was found to be the 3rd largest source of UDP packets in 2002, generating small, periodic packets between clients and servers. 2) Analysis of packet traces from a Counter-Strike server showed an average bandwidth of 542kbps outgoing and 341kbps incoming, with most packets around 23-27 bytes. 3) Online games typically generate small, periodic packets between clients and servers that exhibit predictable communication patterns and temporal and spatial locality.

1. Lecture 9
Characteristics of
Networked Game
Traffic
22 March 2010
1

2. Web
File Transfer
BitTorrent
Skype Calls
2

3. Understanding network traffic
is crucial to traffic engineering
and protocol design
3

4. What are the characteristic of
traffic generated by games?
4

5. data rate
packet size
UDP or TCP
pattern
5

6. Differences between
RTS
FPS
RPG
?
6

7. Counter Strike
7

8. 20,000
servers
as of May 2002
8

9. 3rd
largest source of UDP packets
(behind DNS and RealAudio)
9

10. Centralized Architecture
10

11. 32
players supported
11

12. 3
minutes per round
12

13. 30
minutes per map
13

14. Traffic includes
state updates
text messages
voice
:
14

15. How to collect packet traces?
15

16. Run own Counter Strike’s server
16

17. Collect packets over one week
17

18. 5886
different clients
18

19. 500
million packets analyzed
19

20. 500
million packets analyzed
20

21. 21

22. 22

23. 542 341
kbps kbps
mean out-going mean in-coming
bandwidth bandwidth
23

24. 24

25. 25

26. 26

27. 27

28. 28

29. 50 ms
periodic broadcast from server
29

30. 30

31. 31

32. 80.3
average packet size in bytes
32

33. 39.72 129.51
average in- average out-
coming packet going packet
size in bytes size in bytes
33

34. 34

35. small packets
(< 50 bytes)
35

36. periodic
36

37. predictable
37

38. Shen Zhou Online
38

39. 39

40. 20
hours of traces
40

41. 112,369
connections
41

42. 58
terra bytes of data
42

43. 43

44. 36% 52%
of packets are of packets are
23 27
bytes bytes
44

45. 45

46. 46

47. 7
kbps of bandwidth on average
47

48. 48

49. 49

50. 200 ms
periodic broadcast from server
50

51. 51

52. 52

53. 53

54. “flash crowd” effects
54

55. even smaller packets
55

56. small bandwidth
56

57. periodic
57

58. predictable
58

59. temporal locality
59

60. spatial locality
60