Quote:Original post by gbLinuxI get the impression you're only skimming people's replies and not really taking it all in. I explained the difference between latency (what you call "speed") and bandwidth way back in my second reply:
it is important to differentiate line Speed and Bandwidth. even tho referred to as a "speed" bandwidth is actually not what matters to "PING", it does not measure the speed with which packets travel or influence how long would it take to arrive at destination... for that we need some distance and the number of routers and checkpoints it must stop and visit on the way.
say, if the speed of water molecules in some water-pipe is what packet speed is in network lines, then bandwidth is the width of that pipe, ie. how many packets can flow through it per second. but the speed, the speed is always about light speed, i suppose, minus all the time lost in routing... and that's pretty much all i know about this. what routers do and how much they slow packets down, that i don't know.
Quote:From my second reply
Bandwidth and latency are usually orthogonal (one is not related to the other). Bandwidth is the amount of data per second that your connection can sustain and is usually measured in bits per second (b/s). Latency is the amount of time a packet sent from one end of the connection takes to reach the other end and is measured in seconds (or milliseconds). For example, a sattelite link usually has really high bandwidth, but high latency. Fibre optic connections are typically high bandwidth and low latency, and so on.
Now, bandwidth is technically infinitely expandable - if you want to transfer twice as much data per second, simply install twice as many cables. But latency is limited by the physical properties of the universe we live in - data cannot travel faster than the speed of light, and it takes around 66ms for light to travel from Sydney to LA (for example), meaning the physical minimum round-trip time from Sydney to LA is 133ms*. You cannot improve that (without violating the laws of physics).
Quote:Original post by gbLinuxThe "P2P" used by most Xbox games is similar to what was described by hplus0603. That is, one of the "peers" is designated the "host" (or "server") and everybody connects to him. In reality, it's a client/server model.
btw, does anyone know about this Xbox 360 p2p network?
I'm going to leave this discussion with one observation. It is not uncommon for a novice to a particular field to believe he's come up with a novel idea that nobody's ever thought of before. He can't see any problems with his idea, and he gets frustrated because so-called "experts" will dismiss it, almost out-of-hand. This is not because the experts lack imagination, rather it is because the experts can see the inherent flaws in the idea that a novice - from a lack of experience - will miss.
Some people believe that being a novice can be an advantage because you're not hampered with pre-conceived notions of what is and is not possible, but that is not true. Perhaps you can provide one or two examples of a novice who actually has come up with a novel idea that no "expert" would have considered, but for each of those, I can point out tens of thousands of "novice" ideas that fall down in the real world.
Do not be discouraged, however. We were all novices once! (Not that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination, of course!) My suggestion would be to keep your idea in the back of your mind as you learn all you can about implementing networked applications in the real world - you will be surprised at how complex it actually is.
