An analysis of multi-player network games traffic

Multi-player network games (also known as multi-player online games) are rapidly becoming a significant contributor to overall Internet traffic. However, the characteristics of the traffic generated by games are poorly understood, hence making it difficult to assess their impact (particularly on a large scale) on networks. This paper presents a study on the characteristics of multi-player games traffic, focusing on how the distributions of payload sizes and inter-arrival times vary with the number of players, thereby partially filling the aforementioned knowledge gap. We have found that these distributions are dependent on the game, but in some cases are independent of the number of players.