Glossary
Terms related to Servers/Clients/Multiplayer:
Client: a player on a server. Clients connect to the server in order to play. Many clients connect to one server.
Coop (Co-op): a multiplayer game mode. It involves you and a friend(s) (up to 4) to play along side each other through the single player levels fighting the computer controlled baddies. It's fun if it works, alas SIN is having muchos problems with co-op dude to the scripting and ABO. Co-op mode is net yet officially supported (in an upcoming patch possibly).
Deathmatch (DM): a multiplayer game mode. It's a free for all frag fest, every man for himself (unless team play is enabled). This is the basic multiplayer game mode, and involves pure SKILL.
Dedicated Server: a server thats running in dedicated mode. It's "dedicated" in the fact that it/the admin is trying to give as much resources to the server as possible. It runs in a DOS prompt. Usually "permanent" servers are dedicated, up 24hrs a day.
Frag: a kill, point, score. Happens when you kill a dude =). FYI the term "FRAG" comes from US Marines in the Vietnam war. They had these certain "deadly" grenades that shot out shrapnel (shards of metal) in all directions, and some of it flew back into their buddies faces and chests and they got all fuckered up and shit (Related term: frag grenade). From DOOM to Quake2 the term was widely used, because you were a space marine fighting aliens in the game, and in deathmatch, you were fighting mates. So in deathmatch, your fuckering up your fellow human buddies. Cool eh? yeah...
HPB: High Ping Bastard. The ugly ducklings, retardo's, dudes with high ping, high lag, POOR performance. Pings are 300 and up. These kind of players are using the low-end connections, 28.8, 36.6, 56k and probably have crappy ISPs (most ISPs are crappy). AOL'rs are notorious for being HPBs.
IP Address:EVERYONE on the internet is surfing around with an IP address. Static, Dynamic, hidden or not, everyone is assigned one in order to control and keep track of things on the macro-ISP tech side of things. To find out your IP address, go to Start_Button/Run and type winipcfg.
Lag: to fall back/behind... ie SLOW. Lag is the delay that exists between a server and a client. As most clients are porbalby 100's or 1000's of miles away from a server, you can imagine how much delay there could be, seeing as how one signal has to travel that far. But no, it all happens in MILLISECONDS which is pretty damned amazing. Believe it or not, it is impossible to have NO lag. All clients, even the server itself, have lag (ping thats < 0). But usually, since it all happens in milliseconds, lag is not noticeable by our human eyes. Only when lag increase to a point (+200ping) where you DO see it, because things slow down, to 1/2 a second, even more than a second at times! Lag is not a positive word, so it's wrong to say "Wow, my lag is good today!".
LAN: Local Area Network. This is a whole bunch of 'puters hooked up to each other in one room (or one building). This is probably the best way to play multiplayer because lag is practically eliminated, and you can actually talk and interact with the other players. PARTY TIME. Usually LAN's are in schools and businesses, but you can setup one at home if you like.
LPB: Low Ping Bastard. The elite players, ones who have the lowest ping, the least lag, therefore the best performance. GENERALLY these players are the best. They have various connections ranging from cable, to ISDN, to Tx, to xDSL (there's about 10 versions of DSL for you fruit head ADSL'rs out there, ADSL is only one of them, and second slowest =). LPB pings are 150 and below.
MPB: Medium Ping Bastard. My own creation. Players between HPB and LPB =). Usually with pings between 150 and 300. These dudes most likely have a good 33.6 or 56k, a kick-ass ISP, or are in the same city as the server. These players are the majority group, and with some skills, can easily play with the big boy LPBs.
Multiplayer (MP): the names says it all. Multi - player... meaning there are more than one player(s) in the game. Player as in human player. So you fight against other dudes just like, over the internet, or on a LAN.
Packet: each bit of data sent between the client and server is called a packet (packet o' data!). Pakcets can be dropper, or "lost", during a transfer. Thats when you get wierd errors and bugs. Heavy packet loss = baaaaad. This is how you can test a servers RELIABILITY, another factor involved with performance.
Ping: ping is the amount of time in milliseconds (ms) it takes for one packet of data to transfer between the server and the client. Low ping (lower time) means you have a faster connection with the server. That helps a lot when you play online.
Server: the computer that hosts a multiplayer game. The server "serves" data to clients (players). Many clients connect to one server.