Network communication optimization?

[Ionic]

Why does not Spring's udp communication use diffserv options to optimize data transfer in IP networks (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_services)? It lefts these bits on defaults when Expedited Forwarding or Assured Forwarding mode would be more appropriate setting for real-time communication.

[abma]

if i understood it correctly, diffserv is used on routers: routers classify packets into categories, which means spring can't use it. it would only work if spring would create fake packets which encapselates its traffic in VOIP traffic.

but not sure, didn't fully read the wikipedia page.


also amount of traffic of the spring-engine is very low, there is few stuff which could be optimized in ammount of traffic data / packet size.

[Ionic]

Not exactly. It is just a field in IP frame that can be set by any application to prioritize traffic. I do not understand why you called such packets "fake" because UDP frame is just IP frame? Routers may honor this setting but do not have to. But if they do then prioritized frames would be delivered at higher reliability before default or lower priority frames (at lower loses and/or delays). They are just queued ahead other frames on routers during traffic forwarding between domains.

[abma]

"fake" because the "network operator" (=mostly the network provider i guess) creates the rules which classifies traffic. these rules overrides the existing markings. i guess voip gets higher priority in most networks, this is why using voip would bypass this.

from wikipedia:
"Traffic classifiers may honor any DiffServ markings in received packets or may elect to ignore or override those markings"

so, imo not worth the trouble as it mostly won't change anything when setting these flags.

also i don't understand which problem this would solve, imo we have very few traffic/network problems with the current protocol.

codeword "premature optimization"

[dansan]

Prioritizing traffic is only necessary when the link is congested. If your link is congested you can easily solve it yourself. When some link on the way between you and the autohost is congested (meaning some multi-gigabit inter-AS link), then it might help, but probably won't, as the BGP-routers will prefer to redirect your traffic over a less congested link.

[PicassoCT]

The nature of springs network "communication" is also overestimated ..

spring as you know it - is basically mute. It only communicates a checksum from time to time. What remains is basically a carefully crafted chat that exchanges the mouseclicks and keys pressed.

There is (allmost) no network traffic.

[dansan]

Right, but that little traffic accumulates over time. 1h of game play can be around 3MB of data. That'd be a medium of 0.8 KB/s. So yeah - throughput is not relevant - latency is though.

[PicassoCT]

Agree on that. Sorry if i missunderstood the topic.