SPECIAL ISSUE PAPER On the performance of OnLive thin client games Mark Claypool • David Finkel • Alexander Grant • Michael Solano Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Computer games stand to benefit from ‘‘cloud’’ technology by doing heavy-weight, graphics-intensive computations at the server, sending only the visual game frames down to a thin client, with the client sending only the player actions upstream to the server. However, com- puter games tend to be graphically intense with fast-paced user actions necessitating bitrates and update frequencies that may stress end-host networks. Understanding the traffic characteristics of thin client games is important for building traffic models and traffic classifiers, as well as adequately planning network infrastructures to meet future demand. While there have been numerous studies detailing online game traffic and streaming video traffic, this paper provides the first detailed study of the network character- istic of OnLive, a commercially available thin client game system. Carefully designed experiments measure OnLive game traffic for several game genres, analyzing the bitrates, packet sizes and inter-packet times for both upstream and downstream game traffic, and analyzing frame rates for the games. Results indicate OnLive rapidly sends large packets downstream, similar but still significantly different than live video. Upstream, OnLive less frequently sends much smaller packets, significantly different than upstream traditional game client traffic. OnLive supports only the top frame rates with high-capacity end-host connections, but provides good frame rates with moderate end-host connections. The results should be a useful beginning to building effective traffic models and traffic classifiers and for preparing end-host networks to sup- port this upcoming generation of computer games. Keywords Thin client  Game  OnLive  Network performance  Frame rate 1 Introduction The computer game industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years, and is forecasted to be over a $100 billion industry by 2015 [1], on par with the U.S. movie industry revenue worldwide (DVD and film). 1 Online games have also seen considerable growth, spurred on by the growth in resi- dential broadband Internet connections with high capacities and low latencies that have encouraged game developers to incorporate networked features into their products. Thin clients, where the local computer is primarily an input and output device and the remote computer does the majority of the processing, have seen a resurgence in use because today’s network capacities and latencies can support band- width-intensive, client–server interactions. Thin clients are expected to grow from over 12 million units shipped in 2011 to over 25 million in 2013, and by 2014, 15 % of traditional professional desktop PCs are projected to be replaced by virtual desktops accessed from thin clients [1]. Using thin clients for games has already become commercial, with companies such as OnLive 2 and GameNow 3 having com- mercial success and continuing to expand. M. Claypool (&)  D. Finkel  A. Grant  M. Solano Computer Science and Interactive Media and Game Development, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA e-mail: claypool@cs.wpi.edu D. Finkel e-mail: dfinkel@cs.wpi.edu 1 ‘‘How Much Does Hollywood Earn?’’, Information is Beautiful, http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-holly wood-earn/. 2 http://www.onlive.com/. 3 http://www.ugamenow.com/. 123 Multimedia Systems DOI 10.1007/s00530-014-0362-4