Multi-player network games (also known as multi-player online games) are rapidly becoming a significant contributor to overall Internet traffic. However, the characteristics of the traffic generated by games are poorly understood, hence making it difficult to assess their impact (particularly on a large scale) on networks. This paper presents a study on the characteristics of multi-player games traffic, focusing on how the distributions of payload sizes and inter-arrival times vary with the number of players, thereby partially filling the aforementioned knowledge gap. We have found that these distributions are dependent on the game, but in some cases are independent of the number of players.

This paper discusses how the strict hierarchical address structure of IP version 6 and high levels of IP route aggregation will effect the operation of popular label switching techniques. We predict that the introduction of IP version 6 will cause significant problems with control driven label switching proposals such as MPLS and Tag Switching. We propose an alternate label switching solution that uses information in the IP version 6 address structure to classify and cut-through flows based on destination site address. Our simulation studies shown that over 96% of packets will be switched by ATM bypassing network layer forwarding using this technique.

Wireless ATM (WATM) will be used to support broadband applications for future generation mobile services. To achieve this, the existing ATM protocol must be augmented with mobility management capabilities. One of the important components of mobility management is the ability of the network to seamlessly re-route existing connections to different parts of the network. To date, a number of schemes have been proposed for broadband wireless networks. These schemes can potentially be used in WATM networks. We compare the performance of these schemes in terms of their complexity, handover latency, communication disruption period and buffer and bandwidth requirements.

With video-on-demand (VoD) regarded as one of the drivers for the deployment of broadband integrated service digital networks (B-ISDNs), an important issue is how to provide wide area VoD services most efficiently. A large contributor to the cost of a VoD system is storage. The nature of the service requires massive amounts of storage and bandwidth to be supplied from a video server located within the network. We examine the costs of storage in such servers and develop an efficient allocation scheme designed to minimize this cost. Using this scheme, centralized and distributed approaches to VoD are compared. We conclude that a distributed approach to storage costs no more than a centralized approach and offers considerable advantages in terms of bandwidth requirements and service quality.

The banyan interconnection is prone to internal link congestion, resulting in a blocking switch architecture. Several solutions that have been implemented to reduce the severity of link congestion offer packets a multiplicity of paths, which tend to increase packet delay variability and allow delivery of out-of-sequence packets. This, in turn, can lead to an increase in end-to-end protocol complexity, particularly in the case of real-time services. A solution called multipath interconnection is proposed to overcome this difficulty. Multiple (i.e., alternate) paths are provided and one is selected at call-setup time. Subsequent packets belonging to the call are constrained to follow the selected path. A number of path selection strategies are presented.>