From: Andrew.Wilson@cm.cf.ac.uk (Andrew Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud
Subject: Re: Inter-MUD communication.
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:05:05 GMT
Organization: University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, WALES, UK.



Hi,

	Jhalavar (Danny Brumleve, brumleve@hermes) says:

>     I've coded a very similar system for Armageddon, Arctic, and Dark Shadow's
>Diku (DikuNet... Heehee).  It doesn't have a central server (yet); it just
>opens a socket to each of the other MUDs connected.  Sort of a bad way to
>do it, but we'd never really intended on having more than a few.  If any
>other imps would like to "hook up" with us (it allows remote tell, remote
>who, and a special "chat room" which is "shared" by all the other MUDs),
>mail me at brumleve@hermes.stat.uiuc.edu.  Even if you don't run a Diku,
>we might be able to work out something. 


Lieutenant (DEATHLANDS mud-> still in renovations) says:

>  Gentlemen, all of you sound pretty well off.  But lets think about
>this has this type of deal ever been done, YES..ITs called IRC.
>I spoke to Hulkhogan(IRCnick) from Austratlia. He understands the
>IRC setup, and feels it is much more efficient than muds in many
>ways.

MOO-net has been designed to do things other than 'merely' talking a la IRC.
We HAVE implemented a mechanism that permits MOOs to share any number of Virtual Rooms,
and which enables players to interact with each other in a 'natural' manner.  MOO-net
is able to transmit any form of complex MOO datatype.  Types on MOO are like types
on LP systems.  We are able to transmit a list like:

	{ "Fred", 1, 2, 3, { "a", "b  c  d  d     s", 13}, {"akjaka", "akak"} }

across MOO-net.

How you implement virtual rooms (VROOMs), is up to you.  MOO-net permits each participating
MOO to implement VROOMs in a manner which does not go against the general theme of the
MOO in question.  LambdaMOO has ordinary rooms that you walk into and out of, they look like
any other room but are connected to other MOOs.  Final Frontier MOO, a star-trek theme, is
experimenting with holo-decks.  However, all arewill able to use MOO net to transmit and 
receive the information they require.

A point worth mentioning is that MOO-net has also been designed so that MOO sites do
not have to be directly connected to each other for them to communicate with each other.
A MOO-net network configuration can take on ANY topology.  Draw a few dots on a piece of
paper, join the dots and THAT is a network that MOO-net can handle, without loosing
or duplicating packets of information.

The ENTIRE implementation of MOO-net is in high-level MOO code.  Once the server has made 
a connection (using MOO's open_network_connection() function) all the workings of the
network, including packet parsing, message routing and event handling, are performed
in high-level code.  This means that MOO-net is not as fast as it could be if ALL such
processing was done at the server level of operation.  This is a problem for the server
designers however, I wanted to see if anything could be done AT ALL by simply using
the system features available and without having to modify the server in any way.

Alan Cox, (iiitac@PYR.SWAN.AC.UK) says:

>On no account start opening tcp links sending 1 packet getting 1 packet 
>and closing them, you will generate horrific amounts of extra overheads
>in the connect, connect ack, data, ack, reply, ack, fin, finack, finack
>sequence of frames that will get sent.

>UDP is superb for anything that fits nicely into 1 frame and has a 1 frame reply
>or at worst 2 or 3 frames of reply.

I don't think anyone WAS suggesting that you opened an internet connection sent one packet
down and then closed it again.  MOO-net opens its connections and leaves them open
indefinately.

Andy (Networker etc).