Oliver Brammer: An In-Depth Look at Online Multiplayer in Splatoon 2 (peer2peer, 16Hz tick rate)

Oliver Brammer creates a technical analysis on Splatoon 2 and it's online code.

Some interesting tidbits from his article include:

Peer-to-peer is a system where players make a connection to every other player in the game. Also known as a “mesh network”, this system is the one that Splatoon on the Wii U was using.

Splatoon 2 also uses a peer-to-peer networking system. Even though Nintendo are obviously targeting this to be a portable console, it is still 7-8 times heavier on network usage than it would be if there were dedicated servers!

From the Wireshark data I captured, I’ve been able to produce rough estimates on how much bandwidth and data usage Splatoon 1 and 2 have.

• PS - Packet Size
• DR - Data Rate

Game	Lowest PS	Highest PS	Average PS	Updates	kbps DR	MB/hour DR	Average Latency
Splatoon 1	90 bytes	1250 bytes	214 bytes	25Hz	146kbps	66 MB/hour	113ms
Splatoon 2	102 bytes	1062 bytes	320 bytes	16Hz	80kbps	36 MB/hour	137ms

Dedicated servers and a 60Hz update rate could offer Splatoon 2 players an estimated 45% faster connection in online multiplayer.

Oliver has also provided the raw data in the analysis for the more technically interested.