Linux 6.8 Network Optimizations Can Boost TCP Performance For Many Concurrent Connections By ~40%

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Linux 6.8 Network Optimizations Can Boost TCP Performance For Many Concurrent Connections By ~40%
phoronix.com
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Now, gamers will want to play on Linux for the low latency on online games.

Most low latency use cases in games use UDP, not TCP.

Unless it's a Java Minecraft server which I believe exclusively uses TCP still.

Yeah, that would make sense as opening TCP connections is not really viable for low latency, hahaha.

Opening the connections is one thing but resends and stream ordering can also cause issues since they might delay the latest information reaching the user space application even if the packet for them has actually arrived just because some earlier packet has not. There can also be issues with implementations waiting for enough data to be available before sending a packet.

Depends. There was that one F2P COD clone which used TCP and IIRC it did fine?

If your connection is stable, the latency will more or less be the same, but TCP will consume more bandwidth because of acknowledgement packets, making it harder to keep your connection stable.

On an unstable connection, TCP latency will skyrocket as it resends packets, while UDP will just drop those packets unless the game engine has its own way of resending them. Most engines have that, but they only do it for data that is marked as "important". For example using an item is important, but the position of your character probably isn't, because it'll be updated on the next tick anyway.

Before that you have to download it. Well, using p2p mechanisms.

I always download my games before playing them. I don't know what you mean here.

Unfortunately, many games where people care about that lower latency tend to be competitive with some kind of anti-cheat that doesn’t mesh with Linux.

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