Mercury: a scalable publish-subscribe system for internet games

ABSTRACT

Today's network games suffer from scalability and performance limitations caused by centralized client-server architectures and/or broadcast communication. In this paper, we argue that the communication between components of a game can be modeled as a publish-subscribe system. We present the design of MERCURY, a completely distributed publish-subscribe system, which supports a content-based publish-subscribe model of communication and performs distributed matching using a novel content-based routing protocol. We also present preliminary simulation results identifying key design decisions affecting the scalability and network efficiency of the system.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.8 PERSONAL COMPUTING
      K.8.0 General
          Subjects: Games

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.2 Network Protocols
          Subjects: Routing protocols
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Client/server
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks
          Subjects: Internet (e.g., TCP/IP)
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Performance attributes

General Terms:
Algorithms, Documentation, Experimentation, Performance