All about Central and Distributed Servers

Net games are normally classified into two categories. This classification is based on types of server used by net games namely central server and distributed server. The games which are available from centralized servers are huge games in which thousands of people can participate at the same time. Whereas games running from distributed servers are comparatively small and also number of players are less.

In net games which works from central server most of the information about the environment is contained on the server. The game continues for 24 hours and any player can join at any time. The game will not be dependent on any one player and it continues even if player leaves the game. There will be client software which you need to install on your computer and you have to run that software. Whenever you want to play this type of game you just need to launch the software and log on to the game’s central server.

In a distributed server, server software exists on several dedicated game servers or on individual players' computers. Real-time strategy games such as Myth and 3D shooters such as Quake III Arena are very good example of this type. These games often require to be updated with all new updates coming in often. There may be thousands of players in game like Quake III so it will be difficult to keep up with all of them by a single server. The address list of all the active game servers is maintained by a master server. The game servers send messages to master server after every fixed interval of time to update the master server. Every player who wants to join the game first has to get the list of game servers from master server.

The players once get the list, they can find out related information available for the games on a particular server. Even number of players and ping time can be known. The ping time is the time it takes for commands from client computer to reach the server and return to the player. The ping time is very crucial factor so to avoid lagging players will usually pick a server with the minimum ping time and then connect directly to the game server.

With these two different types of servers available, sometimes even the combination of both centralized and distributed servers is also available. Here the work is divided between two servers; they handle different tasks for the same game. For example, distributed servers control game play, while centralized servers handle extras such as real-time chat between players and player ranking services. Here client have to connect to both the servers for accessing the game for which client have to just follow the host’s instructions.

Both the types servers are performance oriented, different games have their best performances on any one of them. Role playing games such as Everquest uses centralized servers whereas games like Quake Arena uses distributed servers.