We are currently experiencing the birth of a new technology trend in multiplayer games. Although these new games have the ability to become a significant new category in the computer gaming market, the quality and availability of bandwidth hinders this forward progress. The Internet infrastructure is limiting insofar as it does not currently support many of the best ideas of the connected multiplayer gaming community. As some OSPs have found out, the best method of ensuring a long-distance, low-latency, high-bandwidth Internet connection is to architect and build your own network from point A to point B. This eliminates all unnecessary data packet misdirection and congestion. However, this is an expensive and therefore prohibitive solution for a game developer to rely upon.

We've discussed the Internet's latency and bandwidth limitations, the 'Golden Rules' we've outlined in this paper are an excellent start at understanding some of the issues involved in developing connected multiplayer games to work around these limitations. With the new crop of faster, more capable PCs and their accompanying OS', the gaming platform of today makes an attractive target.

The possibilities of online gaming are seemingly endless; the industry needs to have the foresight and imagination to test the boundaries, and the means to push this new technology forward.