Single character telnet...

From: Matthew T. Churilla (churilla@mathcs.duq.edu)
Date: 09/12/95


OK I anly going to do this once.  I am pleading with all of you who are toying
with the idea of single character send and receive please stop.  I only have 
one thing to point out at the moment.  Who here doesn't complain about lag
on a mud the way they are now.  And this is with telnet sending a line per
packek.  Now imagine what will happen if you send out a packet for each 
character that the user types.  Ok I am not sure of tcp/ip packet size
but for the sake of argument lets say that the average packet size is 30 
bytes.  Ok now lets also say that the average line that a user types is 
about maybe 10 bytes.  Ok this averages out to be 40 bytes for every 10 sent.
Now suppose that the same 30 byte packet accompanied every byte this is 31
bytes for every 1 sent.  Now if we ratio this number we come up with 310
bytes for the same 10 byte line.  Ok now lets say that an average mud user
types 1 line every 2 seconds. and the average mud has about 10 users on at 
any given time.  Now this comes out to a loss of 3100 bytes every 2 seconds.
or this is 93,000 extra bytes per minute.  And 5.58M extra bytes per hr.
Ok now mind you I think these numbers are low.  But for arguments sake lets 
say that there 500 muds in the U.S.A.(I know there are more).  This is
now an extra 2.5+Gig extra bytes per hr on the net.  Now sure 2.5Gig sounds
like a low number but think about it what is the average line you type on a 
mud?  Do you type more than 5 characters per second?  Does your mud have
more than 10 users on most of the time?  And lastly do you really think there
are only 500 muds in the U.S.A.?  If you think about it this number is really
small. I am just using these numbers as an example and the real ones are 
proably much larger.  Now think about it if lag is bad now what will it be 
like with all these extra packets and bytes flying around the net?  I 
realze that this will proably upset some people and am willing and happy
to hear comments and complaints.

-- 

Matthew Churilla
Duquesne University CCIT User Consultant
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