ISE01-1: An Overlay Server System (OSS) Platform for Multiplayer Online Games over Mobile Networks

We propose a gaining architecture, called the overlay server system (OSS), for supporting multiparty online games over mobile networks. In OSS architecture, overlay server nodes (OSN) are distributed across the core network architecture of the mobile operator and each node is responsible for both running the game applications and performing the overlay routing. The architecture allows third party game servers that are located outside the core network of the mobile operator to push the execution of delay and bandwidth constrained game components into the core to achieve better quality of service (QoS). When a game consists of multiple mutually exclusive game objects such that each object can be maintained independently, OSS allows per object QoS optimization via selecting the jointly optimal location (i.e. OSN) and overlay routes for each object. This fine-grain optimization benefits most when different objects have different QoS requirements and they are accessed by different users. OSS dynamically adapts to the changes in game and network conditions by switching to better OSN and overlay routes. Our performance analysis on different core network topologies and usage patterns demonstrates that OSS has significant advantages over the alternative peer to peer (P2P), proxy-server, and client-server architectures. The analysis also underlines the individual contributions of object placement and jointly performed overlay route optimization to the performance gain.