Efficient zone mapping algorithms for distributed virtual environments

• This paper deals with the zone mapping problem in large-scale distributed virtual environments (DVEs), e.g., massively multi-player online games, distributed military simulations, etc. To support such large-scale DVEs with real-time interactions among thousands of concurrent, geographically separated clients, a distributed server infrastructure is generally needed, and the virtual world can be partitioned into several distinct zones to distribute the load among the servers. The NP-hard zone mapping problem concerns how to assign the zones of the virtual world to a number of distributed servers to improve interactivity. In this paper, we propose new zone mapping algorithms based on a Linear Programming relaxation of the original problem and meta-heuristics such as local search and evolutionary optimization techniques. We conducted extensive experiments with realistic Internet latency models obtained from real measurements using millions of pairs of geographically distributed IP addresses. The results have shown that our newly proposed algorithms significantly improved the performance of large-scale DVEs in terms of overall interactivity, when compared with existing mechanisms.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Distributed servers

Distributed Virtual Environments

Evolutionary optimizations

Interactivity

Internet latencies

IP addresss

Linear programming relaxation

Local search

Massively multi-player online games

Meta heuristics

Military simulation

NP-hard

Real measurements

Real time interactions

Virtual worlds

Zone mapping

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)