many sockets and or channels

[MickeyB]

I am working on a space trading and combat game.  (who isnt?)
and...
Right now I send chat, updates, levels(as bits) all thru the same pipe(socket)

Do most of you do a serversocket for chat, one for updates(the movement of players/bots) and one for other/misc data?

[Jeff]

No short, no, I generally send all m ydtaa down one pipe and draw the distinction in my ap ppacket procotol.

Having said that there mioght actually be a SLIGHT theoreticla advntage to splitting up if its TCP/IP (or any gauramteed order protocol.)  The reason being if its all in one packet stream then a lost packet holds everything up whereas if you seperate the streams the other streams can keep moving along.

I'd say, in the ideal world, you want all the data that has to arrive in a relative order  in the same connection and independant data in their own connections.

In practice thats too much work and I've never really seen the need to do it so far...

[MickeyB]

thanks.  I will keep things the way I have them for now, all in one pipe.