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: Tonality re-framed: The tone clock as gateway to expanded tonality

authors: Baker, Shamus Adam

subjects: Tone clock

abstract: During the 20ᵗʰ century, developments in musical practice courted controversy by abandoning traditional means of musical organization and expression. A potent response to this trend was the work of Peter Schat in creating the tone clock theory of musical composition, and Jenny McLeod’s efforts to develop these ideas in the New Zealand context. However, Schat’s claim to have created an ‘atonical tonality’ is problematic. This thesis uses the tone clock as a tool for generating an expanded form of true tonality. Based upon the common branching groupings of both tonal framing and tone clock steering, the two approaches are combined to create an expanded tonality of emancipated intervals, allowing the population of an expanded musical territory with the expressive possibilities tonality is already known to possess through the work of earlier composers and theorists. The approach, developed using small experiments in composition and analysis, is that the groupings which emerge from the small number of tonal framing motions are easily described by a steering tree, which relates them to the principles of the tone clock. This allows the same basic tonal framings to be transposed into a greater number of interval combinations. This expanded tonality is also demonstrated in multi-voice textures, making use of unconventional chordal sonorities channeled according to the same framing principles.

text: Tonality re-framed: The tone clock as gateway to expanded tonality During the 20ᵗʰ century, developments in musical practice courted controversy by abandoning traditional means of musical organization and expression. A potent response to this trend was the work of Peter Schat in creating the tone clock theory of musical composition, and Jenny McLeod’s efforts to develop these ideas in the New Zealand context. However, Schat’s claim to have created an ‘atonical tonality’ is problematic. This thesis uses the tone clock as a tool for generating an expanded form of true tonality. Based upon the common branching groupings of both tonal framing and tone clock steering, the two approaches are combined to create an expanded tonality of emancipated intervals, allowing the population of an expanded musical territory with the expressive possibilities tonality is already known to possess through the work of earlier composers and theorists. The approach, developed using small experiments in composition and analysis, is that the groupings which emerge from the small number of tonal framing motions are easily described by a steering tree, which relates them to the principles of the tone clock. This allows the same basic tonal framings to be transposed into a greater number of interval combinations. This expanded tonality is also demonstrated in multi-voice textures, making use of unconventional chordal sonorities channeled according to the same framing principles.

year: 2022

title: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling

authors: Fitzpatrick, Katie

subjects: Health

abstract: This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

text: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

year: 2010