title: Pragmatic internet egress routing for improving player latency in interactive multiplayer games

authors: Fayomi, Oladimeji

subjects: Latency-aware routing

abstract: Interactive multiplayer games rely on the network to ensure a smooth and
responsive experience. When the latency between a game server and a client
is beyond a threshold, the client is unable to play the game properly and often
abandons the game. We posit that this unfortunate disconnection is avoidable
in certain cases. Because Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is agnostic to
latency, the paths used by clients may be suboptimal latency-wise. Providing
performance-aware routing on the Internet in general is a hard problem, and
proposals to change BGP or the core of the Internet struggled to gain traction.
However, Multiplayer games provide a workable problem: it may be possible to
attain feasible (i.e., sufficiently low) latency for players without major changes
to the Internet core.

This thesis presents a pragmatic latency-aware routing control approach
which tackles interactive multiplayer games and other applications that need to
operate under some specific latency threshold but are not bandwidth-hungry.
The proposed approach – Overwatch, leverages BGP Egress Peer Engineering
(EPE) and capitalises on the well-connected nature of game provider networks
to offer multiple paths to reach their clients. By selecting a feasible path
for each client, Overwatch can maximise the number of clients/players in the
game. One of the key advantages of Overwatch is its deployability, which is
enabled by its explicit routing feature using commodity hardware, which is
interoperable with existing devices and does not require collaboration with
other networks. Overwatch controls traffic along feasible paths according to
an operator-defined algorithm. The current implementation is based on a
Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) dataplane. This implementation was used
to evaluate Overwatch in a scenario with 300 clients. Prior to that, we ran
a set of Internet measurements involving relevant game servers in Europe to
calibrate the experiments. The evaluation highlights Overwatch’s benefit in
selecting feasible paths for the players when such paths exist, thus keeping
players online.

text: Pragmatic internet egress routing for improving player latency in interactive multiplayer games Interactive multiplayer games rely on the network to ensure a smooth and
responsive experience. When the latency between a game server and a client
is beyond a threshold, the client is unable to play the game properly and often
abandons the game. We posit that this unfortunate disconnection is avoidable
in certain cases. Because Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is agnostic to
latency, the paths used by clients may be suboptimal latency-wise. Providing
performance-aware routing on the Internet in general is a hard problem, and
proposals to change BGP or the core of the Internet struggled to gain traction.
However, Multiplayer games provide a workable problem: it may be possible to
attain feasible (i.e., sufficiently low) latency for players without major changes
to the Internet core.

This thesis presents a pragmatic latency-aware routing control approach
which tackles interactive multiplayer games and other applications that need to
operate under some specific latency threshold but are not bandwidth-hungry.
The proposed approach – Overwatch, leverages BGP Egress Peer Engineering
(EPE) and capitalises on the well-connected nature of game provider networks
to offer multiple paths to reach their clients. By selecting a feasible path
for each client, Overwatch can maximise the number of clients/players in the
game. One of the key advantages of Overwatch is its deployability, which is
enabled by its explicit routing feature using commodity hardware, which is
interoperable with existing devices and does not require collaboration with
other networks. Overwatch controls traffic along feasible paths according to
an operator-defined algorithm. The current implementation is based on a
Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) dataplane. This implementation was used
to evaluate Overwatch in a scenario with 300 clients. Prior to that, we ran
a set of Internet measurements involving relevant game servers in Europe to
calibrate the experiments. The evaluation highlights Overwatch’s benefit in
selecting feasible paths for the players when such paths exist, thus keeping
players online.

year: 2024

title: National Fitness or Failure? Heredity, Vice and Racial Decline in New Zealand Psychiatry: A Case Study of the Auckland Mental Hospital, 1868-99

authors: Dawson, Maree Elizabeth

subjects: history

abstract: This thesis examines anxieties about national fitness and efficiency in nineteenth-century New Zealand through a detailed study of medical and popular ideas about the causes of mental illness. In particular, it foregrounds the perceived roles played by heredity and vice in medical diagnoses both inside institutions and in wider discussions about mental illness. The thesis draws upon medical journals, popular newspaper articles, government reports and debates, and patient case notes from the Auckland Mental Hospital between 1868 and 1899 to investigate discourses about the mentally ill, and to highlight the relationships between anxieties about this ‘problem’ section of the population and contemporary social concerns. This methodology demonstrates how a range of texts helped to produce a discursive association between heredity and vice, mental illness, and a feared decline in the ‘fitness’ of the ‘British’ race in New Zealand and in the wider British World, and also that the mentally ill in nineteenth-century New Zealand were often depicted as living consequences of a family history of indulgence in various forms of vice, or of the procreation of the mentally unfit. Medical and popular ideas about general paralysis and puerperal insanity, in particular, were strongly related to gender and class norms, and throughout this thesis, ideals of class and gender are explored as shaping influences on medical and popular theories about the aetiology of mental illness in general.
By drawing on medical discourses from Britain and New Zealand, this thesis also demonstrates the transnational nature of psychiatric medical theories deployed in Britain and New Zealand. This transnational transmission of ideas occurred through the migration of British born and educated psychiatrists to New Zealand, the context of British medical journals (such as the British Medical Journal and the Journal of Mental Science) which circulated in New Zealand, and attendance at Intercolonial Medical Congresses, shared between New Zealand and the Australian colonies from 1892. Transactions from these congresses, along with medical journal articles and popular sources, reveal that the period from 1868 until the end of the nineteenth century was an intellectual environment ripe for the emergence of concerns about racial decline, a trend highlighted by the presence of the mentally ill, in a ‘new’ society.

text: National Fitness or Failure? Heredity, Vice and Racial Decline in New Zealand Psychiatry: A Case Study of the Auckland Mental Hospital, 1868-99 This thesis examines anxieties about national fitness and efficiency in nineteenth-century New Zealand through a detailed study of medical and popular ideas about the causes of mental illness. In particular, it foregrounds the perceived roles played by heredity and vice in medical diagnoses both inside institutions and in wider discussions about mental illness. The thesis draws upon medical journals, popular newspaper articles, government reports and debates, and patient case notes from the Auckland Mental Hospital between 1868 and 1899 to investigate discourses about the mentally ill, and to highlight the relationships between anxieties about this ‘problem’ section of the population and contemporary social concerns. This methodology demonstrates how a range of texts helped to produce a discursive association between heredity and vice, mental illness, and a feared decline in the ‘fitness’ of the ‘British’ race in New Zealand and in the wider British World, and also that the mentally ill in nineteenth-century New Zealand were often depicted as living consequences of a family history of indulgence in various forms of vice, or of the procreation of the mentally unfit. Medical and popular ideas about general paralysis and puerperal insanity, in particular, were strongly related to gender and class norms, and throughout this thesis, ideals of class and gender are explored as shaping influences on medical and popular theories about the aetiology of mental illness in general.
By drawing on medical discourses from Britain and New Zealand, this thesis also demonstrates the transnational nature of psychiatric medical theories deployed in Britain and New Zealand. This transnational transmission of ideas occurred through the migration of British born and educated psychiatrists to New Zealand, the context of British medical journals (such as the British Medical Journal and the Journal of Mental Science) which circulated in New Zealand, and attendance at Intercolonial Medical Congresses, shared between New Zealand and the Australian colonies from 1892. Transactions from these congresses, along with medical journal articles and popular sources, reveal that the period from 1868 until the end of the nineteenth century was an intellectual environment ripe for the emergence of concerns about racial decline, a trend highlighted by the presence of the mentally ill, in a ‘new’ society.

year: 2013

title: An old story, a new voice: Tertiary education in the Bay of Plenty region

authors: Amundsen, Diana Leigh

subjects: Bay of Plenty

abstract: In this article, I first critique neoliberal effects on the Aotearoa New Zealand tertiary education sector and then provide a close-up look at tertiary education in the Bay of Plenty region. Information is based on aspects of my doctoral research which was located across three tertiary education organisations comprising the Bay of Plenty Tertiary Education Partnership: The University of Waikato, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology and, Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.  The findings of this research examine connections across the partnership, delving into relevant aspects of universities, polytechnics and wānanga. I evaluate the historical, geographical, political and socio-cultural context of all three institutions. Lastly, I discuss campus connections between the partnership organisations. The emerging picture reveals an old story of expansion and growth with a new voice of tension between collaboration and competition in the face of a neoliberal education context. This article offers timely implications for contemporary and future University of Waikato campus connections and may appeal to academics, graduate students, policymakers and the general public.

text: An old story, a new voice: Tertiary education in the Bay of Plenty region In this article, I first critique neoliberal effects on the Aotearoa New Zealand tertiary education sector and then provide a close-up look at tertiary education in the Bay of Plenty region. Information is based on aspects of my doctoral research which was located across three tertiary education organisations comprising the Bay of Plenty Tertiary Education Partnership: The University of Waikato, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology and, Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.  The findings of this research examine connections across the partnership, delving into relevant aspects of universities, polytechnics and wānanga. I evaluate the historical, geographical, political and socio-cultural context of all three institutions. Lastly, I discuss campus connections between the partnership organisations. The emerging picture reveals an old story of expansion and growth with a new voice of tension between collaboration and competition in the face of a neoliberal education context. This article offers timely implications for contemporary and future University of Waikato campus connections and may appeal to academics, graduate students, policymakers and the general public.

year: 2019