Networked Graphics

Chapter 12. Scalability

Introduction

Scalability is perhaps the one topic in NVE and NG research that has received the most attention in the past. By scalability we mean techniques that ensure that some quality of service is maintained as the number of users goes up or the complexity of the world increases. From early analysis of requirements (Brutzman et al., 1995), through to today, the problem of scalability has been at the forefront of system designers' minds.

While specific latency requirements will motivate a specific choice of consistency mechanism (e.g. an optimistic or conservative algorithm), these techniques mostly assume that there is a certain amount of bandwidth available. However, as user numbers fluctuate and the users create and ...