The effect of multiplexing delay on MMORPG TCP traffic flows

Traffic optimization techniques, based on header compression, multiplexing and tunneling a number of concurrent flows, have been proposed in order to save bandwidth and to reduce the amount of packets per second in certain network segments. These techniques have been standardized for VoIP flows, but they can also be applied to the flows of online games. As a counterpart of the savings, the adding of a multiplexing delay is required in order to get a number of packets to be multiplexed together. The effect of this delay has already been explored for UDP-based games, showing that subjective quality can be maintained while using traffic optimization. In contrast, the present paper explores the issues arising when these optimization techniques are applied to TCP-based games. The interaction of the additional multiplexing delay and the TCP mechanisms is explored, and results are obtained in terms of round trip time increase and traffic overhead modification.