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1.1 Glossary

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This document uses the following terms:

DirectPlay: A network communication library included with the Microsoft DirectX application programming interfaces. DirectPlay is a high-level software interface between applications and communication services that makes it easy to connect games over the Internet, a modem link, or a network.

DirectPlay 8: A programming library that implements the IDirectPlay8 programming interface. DirectPlay 8 provides peer-to-peer session-layer services to applications, including session lifetime management, data management, and media abstraction. DirectPlay 8 first shipped with the DirectX 8 software development toolkit. Later versions continued to ship up to, and including, DirectX 9. DirectPlay 8 was subsequently deprecated. The DirectPlay 8 DLL continues to ship in current versions of Windows operating systems, but the development library is no longer shipping in Microsoft development tools and Software Development Kits (SDKs).

DirectPlay 8 application: A software process that communicates with one or more software processes over a communications network by using the DirectPlay 8 family of protocols.

DirectPlay 8 protocol: The DirectPlay 8 protocol is used by multiplayer games to perform low-latency communication between two or more computers.

DirectPlay 8 service provider: A service provider that can be implemented on top of the DirectPlay 8 protocol [MC-DPL8R], as described in the DirectPlay 8 Protocol: Core and Service Providers Specification [MC-DPL8CS]. When a message is passed through for processing, the protocol [MC-DPLHP] DirectPlay 8 Protocol: Host and Port Enumeration Specification interacts directly with the DirectPlay 8 service provider.

DirectPlay client: A player in a DirectPlay client/server game session that has a single established connection with a DirectPlay server and is not performing game session management duties. It also refers to a potential player that is enumerating available DirectPlay servers to join.

DirectPlay Name Server (DPNSVR): A forwarding service for enumeration requests that eliminates problems caused by conflicts between port usages for multiple DirectPlay applications.

DirectPlay server: The player in a DirectPlay client/server game session that is responsible for performing game session management duties, such as responding to session enumeration requests and maintaining the master copy of all the player and group lists for the game. It has connections to all DirectPlay clients in the game session.

game: An application that uses a DirectPlay protocol to communicate between computers.

game session: The metadata associated with the collection of computers participating in a single instance of a computer game.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] have to be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

host: In DirectPlay, the computer responsible for responding to DirectPlay game session enumeration requests and maintaining the master copy of all the player and group lists for the game. One computer is designated as the host of the DirectPlay game session. All other participants in the DirectPlay game session are called peers. However, in peer-to-peer mode the name table entry representing the host of the session is also marked as a peer.

host migration: The protocol-specific procedure that occurs when the DirectPlay peer that is designated as the host or voice server leaves the DirectPlay game or voice session and another peer assumes that role.

Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX): A protocol that provides connectionless datagram delivery of messages. See [IPX].

peer-to-peer: A server-less networking technology that allows several participating network devices to share resources and communicate directly with each other.

player: A person who is playing a computer game. There can be multiple players on a computer participating in any given game session. See also name table.

round-trip: A process that imports data and then exports that data without data loss.

round-trip time (RTT): The time that it takes a packet to be sent to a remote partner and for that partner's acknowledgment to arrive at the original sender. This is a measurement of latency between partners.

serial link (or serial transport): Running the DXDiag application over a null modem cable connecting two computers. See also modem link.

server application: The application that listens to the notification URL in [MC-BUP] section 3.2.1.1. This is also called a back-end server.

service provider: A module that abstracts details of underlying transports for generic DirectPlay message transmission. Each DirectPlay message is transmitted by a DirectPlay service provider. The service providers that shipped with DirectPlay 4 are modem, serial, IPX, and TCP/IP.

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

User Datagram Protocol (UDP): The connectionless protocol within TCP/IP that corresponds to the transport layer in the ISO/OSI reference model.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.