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Abstract

We propose a fully distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructure supporting networked virtual environment (NVE) applications, such as massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). While P2P computing is commonly recognized as a useful architecture for improving the scalability of MMOGs, it is still challenging to have a truly scalable system without compromising reliability, responsiveness, consistency, and low overhead. We propose a hybrid infrastructure - A Mobile Overlay Peer-to-Peer Architecture for Scalable Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MOPAR), to address this scalability issue of MMOGs. Our approach exploits the concept of interest management, taking advantage of both a structured overlay (i.e., distributed hash table (DHT)), and unstructured P2P architecture. Our infrastructure is not only more scalable and reliable than other approaches; it provides the benefits of high responsiveness, and low overhead. In this thesis, we present a novel hierarchical architecture and associated algorithms to alleviate the workload of each peer, save network bandwidth, and reduce overhead cost. We also present a novel zoning scheme that guarantees all players have a continuous view. We anticipate that our infrastructure will provide a generic, configurable, and efficient framework that can be used to facilitate user-designed P2P MMOGs or NVE applications.