Packet-level traffic analysis of online games from the genre characteristics perspective

Recent online games exert increasing impact on network traffic. While considerable research efforts have been placed on the study of game network traffic, most studies examine either only a small sample of games or games within a specific genre. This paper aims to utilize extensive resources of all notable research studies on online game traffic published over the last decade, and obtain a critical understanding of traffic pattern from game genre perspective. A general classification will be given according to game genres in order to highlight the characteristics pertaining to different game types. Network traffic studies for various game genres will be analyzed individually in the packet level, i.e. interarrival time and packet size. Having highlighted the current research gaps on game network traffic study, this paper will also provide suggestions on areas worthy of future research. The research outcomes from previous studies, despite having some minor discrepancies, have evidenced major commonalities that offer consistent perspectives of online game traffic. These results can be correlated as a guide for general traffic modeling for each game genre that depicts the characteristics of network traffic trends.