September 2004
- Tuplespaces and MUDs J C Lawrence
- Tuplespaces and MUDs Matt Cruikshank
- Dragon Empires is cancelled dienw
- Dragon Empires is cancelled ceo
- Dragon Empires is cancelled Jim Purbrick
- Dragon Empires is cancelled OWEN, Matt, FM
- Dragon Empires is cancelled Alex Arnon
- Dragon Empires is cancelled Dana V. Baldwin
- Dragon Empires is cancelled Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) Michael Sellers
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) Lee Sheldon
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) Tamzen Cannoy
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) Damion Schubert
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) Lee Sheldon
- Room for more? (was Dragon Empires is cancelled) zgj22@drexel.edu
- Dragon Empires is cancelled Jim Purbrick
- Tuplespaces and MUDs Alex Arnon
- Tuplespaces and MUDs Zach Collins (Siege)
- Tuplespaces and MUDs ceo
- Tuplespaces and MUDs Jim Purbrick
- Tuplespaces and MUDs Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Out of Office AutoReply: Distributed State Systems John Borland
- "flat" power treadmill [was: Casual Crowd vs.Time Rich Crowd] HRose
- Cognitively Interesting Combat Mike Rozak
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Douglas Goodall
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? John MacQueen
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? HRose
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Damion Schubert
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Mike Rozak
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiong was:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) William Leader
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiong was:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) Alistair Milne
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiongwas:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) John Buehler
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiong was:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) Bruce Mitchener
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiong was:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) HRose
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitiongwas:(exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info?) John Buehler
- DGN/TECH: exploiting/hacking in MMOGs - sources of info? Per Vognsen
- PHP Mud Jones, Channing
- PHP Mud Chris
- Anyone remember this thesis? Scott Jennings
- Anyone remember this thesis? Paul Schwanz
- SOC Roll play vs. Role play Matthew Rick
- SOC Roll play vs. Role play Zach Collins (Siege)
- SOC Roll play vs. Role play darksuit
- SOC Roll play vs. Role play richard@kavir.org
- SOC Roll play vs. Role play Christopher Allen
- Fwd: Distributed State Systems Alex Arnon
- Fwd: Distributed State Systems Michael Tindal
- Decision making... J C Lawrence
- Decision making... Mike Rozak
- Decision making... Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Decision making... Byron Ellacott
- Decision making... Rayzam
- Decision making... Matt Mihaly
- Decision making... Rayzam
- Decision making... Mike Rozak
- Decision making... Kalle
- Decision making... Jason Messer
- Decision making... Douglas Goodall
- Decision making... Mike Rozak
- Decision making... Byron Ellacott
- Decision making... Tess Lowe
- Decision making... ceo
- Decision making... Douglas Goodall
- Decision making... David Kennerly
- Separating newbies and oldbies Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Separating newbies and oldbies HRose
- Separating newbies and oldbies Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Adam Burr
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Middleditch
- Removing the almighty experience point... Michael Hartman
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... HRose
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Removing the almighty experience point... HRose
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Paul Schwanz
- Removing the almighty experience point... asteroid@rocketmail.com
- Removing the almighty experience point... Byron Ellacott
- Removing the almighty experience point... Kiztent Hatepriest
- Removing the almighty experience point... Johan
- Removing the almighty experience point... Kiztent Hatepriest
- Removing the almighty experience point... Amanda Walker
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ben Hawes
- Removing the almighty experience point... Johan
- Removing the almighty experience point... Johan
- Removing the almighty experience point... Amanda Walker
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Kelly
- Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
- Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
- Removing the almighty experience point... Johan
- Removing the almighty experience point... Travis Casey
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- [SPAM] Removing the almighty experience point... Dana V. Baldwin
- [SPAM] Removing the almighty experience point... J C Lawrence
- [SPAM] Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- [SPAM] Removing the almighty experience point... Dana V. Baldwin
- Removing the almighty experience point... ceo
- Removing the almighty experience point... Dana V. Baldwin
- Removing the almighty experience point... ceo
- Removing the almighty experience point... Bloo
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Kelly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Kelly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Morgan Dodge
- Removing the almighty experience point... Douglas Goodall
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ben Hawes
- Removing the almighty experience point... neild-mud@misago.org
- Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
- Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... David Wright
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... David Wright
- Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
- Removing the almighty experience point... Tim Schubert
- Removing the almighty experience point... Devin Smoth
- Removing the almighty experience point... zgj22@drexel.edu
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Jason Messer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Michael Hartman
- Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
- Removing the almighty experience point... Devin Smoth
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Devin Smoth
- Removing the almighty experience point... Otis Viles
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... neild-mud@misago.org
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Middleditch
- Removing the almighty experience point... neild-mud@misago.org
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Middleditch
- Removing the almighty experience point... richard@kavir.org
- Removing the almighty experience point... Sean Middleditch
- Removing the almighty experience point... Corey Cauble
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ben Hawes
- Removing the almighty experience point... Brian Hook
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ben Hawes
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... brian@thyer.net
- Removing the almighty experience point... Bloo
- Removing the almighty experience point... ceo
- Removing the almighty experience point... Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Removing the almighty experience point... richard@kavir.org
- Removing the almighty experience point... Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Removing the almighty experience point... Corey Crawford
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Freeman, Jeff
- Removing the almighty experience point... HRose
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Mike Shaver
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Mike Rozak
- Removing the almighty experience point... Zach Collins (Siege)
- Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
- Removing the almighty experience point... Mike Rozak
- Removing the almighty experience point... Will Jennings
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Travis Casey
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
- Removing the almighty experience point... P J
- [SPAM] Removing the almighty experience point... Dana V. Baldwin
- Removing the almighty experience point... P J
- Removing the almighty experience point... Will Jennings
- Removing the almighty experience point... Mike Rozak
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Amanda Walker
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Mike Rozak
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Removing the almighty experience point... Miroslav Silovic
- Removing the almighty experience point... Matt Mihaly
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Mike Rozak
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Chek Yang FOO
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Corey Cauble
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Damion Schubert
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Mike Rozak
- Griefer repellant (Was Decision making...) Chek Yang FOO
- State of Play Conference Invitation Noveck, Beth
- BIZ: Breaking the VW marketing model Mike Rozak
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) J C Lawrence
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) Chris
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) Ren Reynolds
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) zgj22@drexel.edu
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) Chek Yang FOO
- Has the circle gone rusty? (fwd) Paul Schwanz
- ClicheQuest J C Lawrence
- Putting the crawl to a halt David Johansson
- Putting the crawl to a halt Vincent Archer
- Shift in time Brian Lindahl
- Shift in time Peter A. Harkins
- Shift in time Mike Rozak
- Shift in time Michael Sellers
- Shift in time Arnau Rosselló Castelló
- Shift in time Robert Zubek
- Shift in time Thomas Clive Richards
- Shift in time Mike Rozak
- Shift in time Robert Zubek
- Shift in time Amanda Walker
- Shift in time Paolo Piselli
- Shift in time Damion Schubert
- Shift in time Paolo Piselli
- Shift in time Michael Sellers
- Shift in time Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
- Shift in time Sunny Gulati
- Shift in time Brian Lindahl
- Shift in time Matt Mihaly
- Shift in time Brian Lindahl
- Shift in time Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Harlan Beverly
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Ben Greear
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Jay Moran
On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Harlan Beverly wrote:
> My question for the group is this: what features would be useful
> to gamers/game servers in an ADVANCED NETWORK PROCESSING Network
> Card (NIC)?
> Would TCP/IP Offload be of benefit? (my thought is not much,
> since most games are UDP)...
> What about a UDP/IP Offload engine? (for example:) what if all it
> did was hardware support for IP REASSEMBLY?
> Any other ideas for features in such a product? e.g. what do
> gamers want in a networking card?
> Also, I'm trying to reach a contact or two at a MMORPG and/or
> network game dev. company to ask them this question as well.
Well, there are several functions that TCP offloading can
perform. There would really only be two for UDP offloading however;
checksum calculation (big one) and re-assembly as you said. But that
might just be more than enough reason to do so. As for what actual
gamers would want in ANY kind of offloading, I'm not really sure I
understand the question. In my opinion the gamer will never have
enough network traffic on their end workstation to justify any type
of network offloading. Now, the servers however, that is a different
story. Your UDP offloading might have lots of merit there.
Oh yeah, one more thing, I THINK most vendors implementations of TCP
offloading right now, would include re-assembly even for UDP because
they offload IP functions as well, which is where the fragmentation
would occur. So, main benefit would be UDP checksum calculation,
which should be extremely easy (if a vendor hasn't already done it)
to implement on their TCP NICs.
Just for a little discussion on what TCP offloads can occur, there
are several choices a NIC vendor can make as to what they want to
try and offload. Choices such as connection setup (SYN, SYN-ACK,
ACK) can be very useful for the CPU to not participate in. For
example, if you are under a Denial-of-Service attack using SYN
floods, why bother the CPU with an interrupt for every single SYN
packet you get. By offloading those to the NIC until the connection
is fully established, you can prevent a serious amount of interrupts
and potentially not be impacted by a SYN flood.
Of course, re-assembly and TCP checksums were already discussed,
then there are TCP retransmissions which can be handled by the card
which would be great if you have lots of players on lossy modem
links. There are some cards which actually use a kernel poll method
instead of interrupt method. I'm not sure there are any game
servers out there that would need to go this extreme (I use these
cards to snoop/sniff large links with greater than 600Mb/s of
traffic). If you are looking at doing nothing but traffic related
stuff with a NIC card though, these polling cards rock. What happens
is the NIC does damn near everything and then the kernel itself just
checks the memory to read in the data. Obviously your CPU is at a
constant 90-95% utilization, so not very useful for a server doing
anything other than traffic investigation, but I love these cards
for what I need them for.
Oh yeah, more offloading that occurs with TCP cards, and could (if
not already) be done for UDP is the DMA transfer of the packets to
memory. Open up a DMA channel from the NIC and put the data where
the CPU is going to want it. Again, this might already be done with
the so called TCP offload cards because it is pretty basic stuff.
ACKs are a BIG thing in TCP that the CPU has NO BUSINESS in. If
you've gotten good data from the sender, go ahead and tell the
sender you got it, don't interrupt the CPU to make it generate an
entire ACK packet. Speaking of ACKs, do you really need the CPU to
keep track of the current sequence number? As a TCP Offload NIC,
surely you can do that for yourself... so do it!
Oh well, just a few things that could be done. Now what would really
be cool is for a MMORPG developer to spend a little time with an
ASIC/FPGA based NIC and create their own offloads. As you said most
use UDP, but there still is some types of keep alives and data
acknowledgements. Is there really a need for the servers to spend
time doing that, or if there was an FPGA on the NIC that the MMORPG
developer had customized to offload some common repetitive functions
to the NIC (along with the UDP ideas we talked about up top) think
of the CPU reduction! Okay... so I guess we just have to imagine
because without a rather thorough profile of the MMORGP's networking
function calls to see where the CPU is spending time, it'd be a
waste to actually make something like this. And of course, as long
as the MMORPG is making money, won't it always just be easier to
throw more machines up to solve the problem?
Oh well, this was fun to think about. I like it when I get to marry
my speciality (networking) with my hobby (online gaming). By the
way, greetings everyone, I've never posted here before, but have
been lurking for a few months. Again, nice discussion group.
Jay
--
http://tp.org/jay - TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Harlan Beverly
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Ben Greear
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Harlan Beverly
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Jay Moran
- OpenTNL and DirectPlay (hardware acceleration) Harlan Beverly
- OpenTNL and DirectPlay (hardware acceleration) Brian Hook
- OpenTNL and DirectPlay (hardware acceleration) Jeremy Noetzelman
- OpenTNL and DirectPlay (hardware acceleration) Harlan Beverly
- OpenTNL and DirectPlay (hardware acceleration) Brett Bibby
- BIZ: Gaming Hardware Startup, looking for good Gaming Business Development Person Harlan Beverly
- BIZ: Gaming Hardware Startup, looking for good Gaming Business Development Person
- BIZ: Gaming Hardware Startup, looking for good Gaming Business Development Person Amanda Walker
- The Lag monster... Harlan Beverly
- The Lag monster... Matthew D. Fuller
- The Lag monster... Kiztent Hatepriest
- The Lag monster... Kiztent Hatepriest
- The Lag monster... Sean Kelly
- The Lag monster... Justin Randall
- The Lag monster... Sean Kelly
- The Lag monster... Harlan Beverly
- The Lag monster... Amanda Walker
- The Lag monster... lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- The Lag monster... Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers? Byron Ellacott
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitioning William Leader
- DGN/TECH: Implementing server side spatial partitioning Damion Schubert