Deploying a Zone-Based Massively Multiplayer Online Game on a Congested Network

A massively multiplayer online game often deploys dozens or hundreds of servers to support millions of players around the world. A slow response time stemming from an ill-designed network infrastructure could render the game noncompetitive. To establish an efficient infrastructure, the authors focus on selecting host facilities on backbone network nodes, assigning client clusters to these facilities, and determining the required capacity for each host site. An exact solution approach is obtained from solving a minimum cost set-covering problem. The efficiency of the solution approach, in comparison with a greedy heuristic, is also reported.