Beyond the LAN: Techniques from Network Games for Improving Groupware Performance 1 1 2 3 Jeff Dyck , Carl Gutwin , T. C. Nicholas Graham , and David Pinelle 1Department of Computer Science 2Department of Computer Science 3Department of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan Queen’s University University of Nevada, Las Vegas Saskatoon, SK, Canada Kingston, ON, Canada Las Vegas, NV, USA
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[email protected] ABSTRACT bandwidth is limited and packet loss is common, and current approaches to networking for CSCW applications quickly run into Networked games can provide groupware developers with severe difficulty. Networking infrastructures have been important lessons in how to deal with real-world networking improving, with the widespread presence of high-speed issues such as latency, limited bandwidth and packet loss. Games connections to the home. However, the increase of wireless and have similar demands and characteristics to groupware, but unlike mobile platforms means that it is as important as ever for the applications studied by academics, games have provided groupware applications to operate effectively under limited production-quality real-time interaction for many years. The networking conditions. Poor networks cause problems for visual techniques used by games have not traditionally been made communication, coordination and anticipation of actions, and public, but several game networking libraries have recently been generally reduce the richness and quality of real-time released as open source, providing the opportunity to learn how collaboration [11,12]. Effective use of limited networks involves games achieve network performance. We examined five game tradeoffs – e.g., between jitter and feedthrough time – and if real- libraries to find networking techniques that could benefit time groupware is to succeed, it must find ways to manage these groupware; this paper presents the concepts most valuable to tradeoffs and optimize limited network resources.