[Bloat] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Ajit Pai caves to SpaceX but is still skeptical of Musk's latency claims

[Jonathan Morton]

> On 14 Jun, 2020, at 12:15 am, Michael Richardson <mcr at sandelman.ca> wrote:
> 
> They claim they will be able to play p2p first person shooters.
> I don't know if this means e2e games, or ones that middlebox everything into
> a server in a DC.  That's what I keep asking.

I think P2P implies that there is *not* a central server in the loop, at least not on the latency-critical path.

But that's not how PvP multiplayer games are typically architected these days, largely due to the need to carefully manage the "fog of war" to prevent cheating; each client is supposed to receive only the information it needs to accurately render a (predicted) view of the game world from that player's perspective.  So other players that are determined by the server to be "out of sight" cannot be rendered by x-ray type cheat mods, because the information about where they are is not available.  The central server has full information and performs the appropriate filtering before replicating game state to each player.

Furthermore, in a PvP game it's wise to hide information about other players' IP addresses, as that often leads to "griefing" tactics such as a DoS attack.  If you can force an opposing player to experience lag at a crucial moment, you gain a big advantage over him.  And there are players who are perfectly happy to "grief" members of their own team; I could dig up some World of Tanks videos demonstrating that.

It might be more reasonable to implement a P2P communication strategy for a PvE game.  The central server is then only responsible for coordinating enemy movements.

 - Jonathan Morton