Multiplayer online first person shooter games are usually client-server based. This paper reviews networking issues and tradeoffs associated with common techniques used to discover playable game servers. ISPs, game hosting companies and private enthusiasts typically host game servers and publishers host 'master servers'. To seek available game servers clients query the master servers for lists of currently active game servers then probe the list for status information and latency estimates. Slow probing irritates players, whilst probing too quickly congests consumer's links (inflating latency estimates). A game server's inbound probe traffic reveals the topological distributions of likely player populations.
['Grenville J. Armitage']
Discovering First Person Shooter game servers online: techniques and challenges