Matchmaker Performance

[Code-Over-Time]

Category: Server Development / Load Testing

Level: Principle

Description

The matchmaker is a potential bottleneck in our system. It is also critical for the player enjoyment of the games. Every multiplayer game that is registered on Varcade Games will communicate with it in order to create and join games.

We need to understand what the breaking point of the matchmaker service is and consider how to scale it accordingly.

Deliverable

• A performance assessment of the matchmaker
  • Understand how many requests per second the service can handle before requests start to fail
  • Understand the latency profile of the service while under load (ie. how long do requests take to get serviced)
  • Identify any bottlenecks in the service
• Explore and identify opportunities for meaningful performance improvements

Acceptance Criteria

• Performance report that covers max requests per second and latency of the matchmaker service
• Demonstrate ability to improve the numbers in the report

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Task Tips!

• Note: Principle tasks will generally involve an element of testing and exploration, so the directions here are light. At this level you would be expected to identify current problems and potential future problems, and manage the risk accordingly
• Consider the fact that the matchmaker sends requests to game servers, which could potentially be slow.
• Flask 2.0+ supports async operations - you should consider this
• You can build on the load tests in build_tools/load_generator