Question

I’m creating a simple online multiplayer game, with which two players (clients) can play the game with each other. The data is sent to and fetched from a server, which manages all data concerning this.

The problem I’m facing is how to fetch updates from the server efficiently. The data is fetched using AJAX: every 5 seconds, data is fetched from the server to check for updates. This is however done using HTTP, which means all headers are sent each time as well. The data itself is kept to an absolute minimum.

I was wondering if anyone would have tips on how to save bandwidth in this server/client scenario. Would it be possible to fetch using a custom protocol or something like that, to prevent all headers (like ‘Server: Apache’) being sent each single time? I basically only need the very data (only 9 bytes) and not all headers (which are like 100 bytes if it’s not more).

Thanks.

Answer 1

html5 sockets will be the way to do this in the near future.

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/start-using-html5-websockets-today/