SEIV Gold Demo does *not* have TCP/IP

[robinleepowell]

Actually, UDP is *worse* for transfer of anything larger than the size of a single packet (generally <1KB).

Substantially worse, actually. If SEIV Gold is using UDP for the actual turn transfers (which I didn't test), it would probably get rather a lot faster with TCP/IP. *Especially* over dialup.

The only advantages to UDP are that individual packets get there faster (at the cost of losing many of them) and it's easier to program.

-Robin

[geoschmo]

Well, if that's the case, by all means please suggest it to Aaron. Anything that would speed it up I am all for.

Geoschmo

[robinleepowell]

To be a lot more specific, here's an IRC chat with people who know more about networking than I can even begin to describe (I work at a company that has some people that are truly frighteningly good with networking):

- -------------

<me> General technical question: is UDP still going to be faster than TCP when

<me> you're using it to send like large files and such?

<speaker1> what does it mean that UDP is faster than TCP?

<speaker1> define "faster"

<me> Uhhh, I'm transfering a 100K of data from machine a to machine b.

<me> Faster is defined as it would be in a dictionary.

<me> 'Takes less time'.

<speaker1> your data won't get tehre if you use UDP

<speaker1> and it will if you use TCP

<speaker1> so I guess infinity is kinda slow

<speaker1> unless you implement guaranteed delivery on top of UDP

<me> Assuming that the UDP-based mechanism ... yeah, that.

<speaker1> in which case you may as well use TCP and take a couple extra round trips for the connection setup

<speaker2> then you're just reimpling tcp

<me> Cool, thanks.

<speaker4> If you need the entire file then use TCP

<speaker4> If you can afford to loose chunks but you want to get the data you do get sooner then use UDP

<speaker2> or if you don't need the data to be in sequence

<speaker2> but you need all of it

* speaker3 has flashbacks to shouting this argument at Dreamcast game developers

<speaker1> well, you still won't get all of it without guaranteed delivery

<speaker2> right, but you can build guaranteed delivery without sequencing very easily

<me> Yes, I am trying to explain to people on a game forum that if you have 5 people connected to a game where it occasionally transfers large amounts of data (relative to packet size), with no data
transfer between those (it's turn based), it will *not*
slow down when you move to TCP.

<me> Especially when several players are on modems.

<speaker1> uh, of course not

<speaker1> it'll just take a half second longer to start up the connection

- ------------

-Robin

[robinleepowell]

Furthermore:

- -----------

<speaker3> as a matter of fact when dealing with modems you are likely to see an improvement in performance when moving to TCP

<speaker2> why's that?

<speaker2> you talking about header compression?

<speaker3> yes, and the fact that some dailup servers will drop udp sooner than tcp packets because the tcp ones will just get
+retransmitted

[Zarix]

I have a firewall that should be able to work with UDP. It has setting that has to be used during Online gaming that allows UDP and TCP. Although I haven't ever tried it with any UDP game. All games I can think of use TCP.

[geoschmo]

Heh. I love geekspeak.

Suggestion, cut/paste that convo into your email to Malfador. It's greek to me mostly, but it might mean something to them.

But try and be polite.

Geo

[robinleepowell]

Zarix: note further that some of us can't alter the firewalls that we're behind. Work firewalls, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if AT&T cable internet blocked this stuff (they block so much other stuff).

-Robin