[MUD-Dev] TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers?

[Harlan Beverly]

--- Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:
> Harlan Beverly wrote:

> Latency with normal networking NICs is less than 1ms under all but
> extreme circumstances, so I do not see how a TOE would help at all
> on the client side...  (Note that ping on Linux on a local 100bt
> LAN is about .3ms, and that's full round trip.)

> It's possible it could help on the server side, but are game
> servers really limitted by the networking stack?  That would mean
> that the network connection to the server was several hundred
> megabits, at least, like a dedicated OC-12???


Ben and Jay, et. all,

Let's presume that we had UDP offload, with extra General Purpose
Offloading of a particular games networking (let's say Half-Life or
Doom 3).

There would be 2 advantages:

  1.) CPU offloading.  Best case, nearly all the network processing
  from UDP to Application Layer is handled by the NIC.  How much CPU
  impact would that be overall? Also, interrupts might be less...

  2.) Latency Improvement.  0-copy allows some latency improvement,
  as would handling IP Reassembly, and the multiprocessing effect
  might cause more.  How much latency could we squeeze out of the
  system?  I would think maybe 3ms MAX.  But that's 10% improvement
  over a standard DSL's 30ms latency.  Not to mention the benefit
  goes up a lot when Out-of-Order TCP (or custom UDP re-ordering) or
  IP Fragments are being handled by the NIC.

Any other benefits of general purpose processing offloading
abilities for a custom UDP game network stack?  (E.g. not just UDP
but also parts of the games network stack as well)

Thanks,
and very interesting discussion,
Harlan
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev