[ENet-discuss] Channel count at server

[M. Rijks]

Hi everyone,

Another query which I hope someone can shed some light on.

My client library (which I intend to use for more than one game) connects either to a game server or a kind of lobby server that also acts as a STUN server, helping clients connect to game servers. To make things easier for end users, they will always connect to an IP not knowing whether it's the (STUN) lobby server or the game server - they retrieve a list of sessions (more than one in the case of a lobby, just one in the case of a game server) and when they select a session to join they are redirected to the game server (if it turns out they're on a lobby server and not on a game server).

What I'm slightly concerned with is that in Enet, it seems that the client decides how many channels are used for communication. That's unfortunate because I'd like the client to always use a very large number (let's say all 255) of channels when connecting to a a game server, but for the lobby server it would need just one channel as there isn't much data to pass and it's all in one reliable sequence. Both clients and servers connect to the lobby server, and clients would only be connected for a short while however a lobby server could potentially serve as many clients as it can hold connections - and each connected client would occupy 255 channels...

My questions are:

1. Am I correct to assume that the connecting client choses the amount of channels to open? The interface seems to confirm this.
2. If so, what are the repercussions performance-wise and memory-wise, how does this escalate?
3. Is there any way to make sure the lobby server 'sticks' to the single dedicated channel?

Any help appreciated, thanks!

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