quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
While I do agree that it would be nice if it were easier/possible to play through a firewall, our experience with testing it on the beta team showed that speed was very much an issue.
With several players (I think we had as many as five in one game), if any players are on dialups it can take a long time to get the files to eveyone. Especially if the host is on a dialup modem
This is an area I have very little expertise in, but if changing it to make it more accesable through firewalls is going to slow it down even more, ugh. 
Geoschmo
Speed of the server is certainly an issue. The problem seems to be that it sends ONE file at a time, regardless of its available bandwidth. If it were smart enough to simultaneously send to all players at once and 'rotate' among the connections checking if it's time to send some more of the file it could have much better performance. I don't know the details of TCP vs. UDP so I can't say if his use of UDP is a limiting factor that forces him to do this 'one player file sent at at time' thing. If someone can show him code demonstrating how to do that in
either UDP or TCP I think it would be a big help.
And honestly, isn't it just plain stupid to be a HOST on dialup?
Only clients should use dialup. The host should be on DSL/cable or some other broadband.