Influence of the router buffer on online games traffic multiplexing

This work presents a study of the behavior of a tunneling, compressing and multiplexing technique, named TCM, which can obtain bandwidth savings when many users of online games share the same path, as it occurs e.g. in Internet cafes. The main characteristics of the technique are summarized, and some tests are carried out with real machines which emulate two different buffer policies, using traffic traces of a popular First Person Shooter game. The results show that the obtained bandwidth savings can be significant, so they can improve user's experience, and that the best parameters for the protocol have to be empirically obtained in each case.