First Person Shooter Multiplayer Game Traffic Analysis

Internet delay is important for FPS games because it can determine who wins or loses a game. Network traffic for such games has been analysed using packet size and inter-packet time metrics fitting a statistical model. However, the effect of other network traffic on game traffic was not investigated or considered. This paper explores the traffic generated by an FPS game, taking into account the effects of other Internet traffic. Experiments were conducted in an isolated local network, repeated across the Internet and in a simulator with varying degrees of background traffic. FPS game packet inter-arrival time distribution was observed to spread with the decrease of bandwidth due to other traffic along network paths. The twin peak characteristic of packet inter-arrival time observed in the isolated local network experiment flattens and spreads to a bell-shape as bandwidth decreases due to the increased and non-unique delay of packet arrivals.