| Summary: | This master thesis in computer science was performed at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, during the fall of 2003, and is a part of a larger project run by the Swedish game development company Agency9. The company plans to include a networking module in their complete software suit and needs to design, implement and evaluate a prototype in order to start the development process. This thesis evaluates the most common solutions suitable for implementation into the company software today and compares chosen solutions in different areas as ease of use and performance. The master thesis also discusses some issues of scalability in networking applications used for time critical multimedia distribution. In order to achieve the specifications and allow further enhancements of the framework, some commonly used methods of traffic limitation must be implemented in the prototype. This thesis describes a general framework called AgentNE, which is a networking module (middleware) implemented in Java. The framework provides a clean and simple way to access the Java networking layer in order to reduce development time. The conclusion of the thesis is that the most suitable implementation is to implement a combination of currently used solutions, which provides a framework to further develop the target applications network capabilities. The thesis also mentions areas in which the framework needs further work in order to fulfill certain expectations of developers using commercial networking middleware. The framework has been tested through prototyping together with Agency9´s software project MegaCorps Online, which relies exclusively on the AgentNE to manage its networking functions. MegaCorps Online is an online entertainment application: enabling up to 32 players to play the game through any network using the Internet Protocol. The thesis presents some results from some experiments using this prototype. Validerat; 20101217 (root)
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