[Performance Statistics]Help

garric
edited March 2012 in Photon Server
Hi,
We are evaluating Photon as network engine candidate. But there're still something we are not clear.
We haven't found any statistics or docs on Photon performance. Say, what's the maxmium plyaers one room can hold?(Assumping one server only run one room).
Meanwhile, due to the licence limit, we can't simulate thousands of clients connecting to the server. In fact, even with the limitless ccu of 30 days trial licsence, the app doesn't work when over 100 connetions.
So, again, is there any statistics or docs on Photon performance, which can cover these following uncertainty,
considering the varied kinds of games, take the lite and mmo as example for clarification.
1. What's the max number of players a room can hold? and the related computer system requirments. I mean, number of cpu core, size of memory, etc.
2. Whta's the max connections can a server surpport? and the related computer system requirments.
3. Is there any existing games performance report? If possible, this would be better.
I believe, these answers may do a lot of help to other develpers confusing whether to adpot Photon.
Thanks.
:)

Comments

  • There is no limit on how many players a room can hold as this has nothing to do with the number of users but with the data you send through.
    If you are sending constant realtime data, it will be in the 3 digit range while something with only rare communication like a chat or a 'turn based' interaction between the users can go into 4 at best 5 digit range.
    Its important to keep in mind that with Lite, any message sent to the room is sent to all others normally which gives a power of 2 proportionality on bandwidth and message processing and thus you are better focusing on keeping the messaging as low as possible (this holds for any networking technology by the way, as this is a fundamental networking aspect that can't be avoided, so opt the room sizes for the target bandwidth you want to pay and the bandwidth you expect your users to have)

    If you need many players in one room you would normally not use the Lite application but the MMO one instead which offers interest areas to limit the data syncronization to their proximity (you can fully control who if you want), which makes a major difference as the number of messages that need to be handled is lowered significantly.

    0. Once you ahve a game ready you can enable the unlimited trial if you want to test the actual usage :)

    1. Preconfigured its 255 for LoadBalancing, unsure on the limit in Lite and MMO has no rooms but a single continous world.
    All these applications are only sample applications though and you can change them where you see need due to your use case so this number shouldn't be of much relevance to you. If you have a game where you have little enough traffic to keep this many players in without dead bombing their bandwidth, you can do it.

    2. I think its currently short indexed unless that changed, but realistically you will not find any hardware on earth for the coming years that can host 65k on a single machine anyway if we talk about anything realtime (EvE Online has 50k CCUs in a single world and have a cluster of over a dozen machines including a new one with yet unannounced hardware components from Intel to give you an idea).

    3. You would have to check if the devs of the games listed on the page offer such. I'm not aware of any but the listing of games there gives you a good idea of what can be done


    Is there any special reason why you would want all in one room?
    Its at least out of my view - beside the MMO case - a nightmare to even approach it from this end nor could I think of anything beside an MMO and a Chat where it would even make sense.
  • The "Unlimited" trial license will work only for 30 days after first use. Any other .license file should be removed from the folder. Restart Photon to apply it (just switching the files won't help). PhotonControl also shows "Unlimited" under License Info when it's restarted.

    1. There is none. However, the room analogy does not work well when there should only be one. Then, better use the MMO example (more complicated but open world approach).
    2. We use quad core machines with 4GB memory and usually the network bandwidth is the limiting factor for this setup. Depending on game style, you get around 1000 CCU for an FPS and much more CCUs for less active games.
    The minimum requirements: http://doc.exitgames.com/v3/overview/requirements
    3. You want to know our references? Look at CMune doing Überstrike or World Golf Tour, F1 Online, etc...