Traffic Modelling for Fast Action Network Games

A significant share of today's Internet traffic is generated by network gaming. This kind of traffic is interesting in regard to it's market potential as well as to it's real time requirements on the network. For the consideration of game traffic in network dimensioning, traffic models are required that allow to generate a characteristic load for analytical or simulative performance evaluation of networks. In this paper the fast action multiplayer game Counter Strike is evaluated based on one month of Internet traffic traces and traffic models for client and server are presented. The paper concludes with remarks on QoS metrics for an adequate assessment of performance evaluation results.