Quote:Nice CoderYou have a set of servers. The client connects to the geographically closest server, which is not overrun, and which has the lowest ping times.
Cross "geographically closest server" off your list of requirements. It doesn't matter unless you specifically want people to play within regional boundaries. Geographical proximity has very limited relevance to ping time.
Quote:Nice CoderThese are groups (chains) of servers which have a very small ping time, compared to others (for eg. one would be run by 5 or 6 servers in sydney, melbourne and newcastle, using the same isp
From personal experience having worked with commercial MMOs and big-name game services - don't put them on the same ISP, even if they're in different datacenters.
Quote:Hplus0603Having played extensively with these kinds of parameters, it's been my experience that 600 ms one-way delay and 5 Hz update rate isn't enough for good interactivity.
The acceptability of these parameters is wholly dependent upon genre, entity density, and the availability of advanced synchronization techniques. 600ms is a fairly common peak-time RTT, and 600ms one-way should certainly be managable in bursts. Obviously I would not condone/promote/advance any architecture that inherently imposed these specific parameters, but any viable MMO will need to gracefully handle cases where these parameters occur due to less-than-optimal conditions.
