UDP reliability

[Tuna]

Aquadasoftians, how reliable would you say UDP Blast is on getting the message to recipients?

[DizzyDoo]

That will depend very much on how far the packet is taking. I remember running the server on my dedicated box that is on the same network as my machine, and I never misplaced a packet. But let the UDP packets loose on the web and they'll start getting lost due to collisions. Something to try is to create an application that sends a blasted message to the server, and then the server sends back a TCP receipt when it's received (just like how TCP actually works) and get the app to calculate the percentage that get through. It'll probably be a lot higher than you'd imagine.

[Tuna]

Actually, I've already created an app that sends a UDP every 15/100th of a second.

This app has a send counter and a receive counter.

I run 2 instances of it and if the counter is off, then a udp packet was lost.

when i run it internally (against my own server), just as you said, I see no loss of packets.

I can't run it externally as of yet, because here at my office, apparently we're blocking external UDP from getting back in, or there is a 100% loss. Not sure which.


I want to know this because I'm in the process of re-writing my game to be as efficient as I can get it. If UDP (blast messages) work well enough, that's how I'll do it.

I'll likely build a UDP test cycle into the startup of the game, and if UDP fails, I'll have it use TCP (Send) instead.

[James]

UDP is broken in the latest build. I've just fixed it, so give me 20 minutes and I'll upload a new one.

[Tuna]

I'm quite pleased with UDP (BLAST). I sent 500+ blasts at 15/100 second interval and only lost 1 packet in my initial test.

I then ran a second test, same method, and hit 100% of all packets sent were received (this was also 500+ blasts of a text message.)

Additional tests had minimal loss (never more than 2 packets lost) in batches of 500 blasts.

Considering the distance between Austin, TX and the klikfarm server, i'd say this is great results.