Using boost asio for pub/sub style tcp in a game loop
- by unohoo
I have been reading through the boost asio documentation for a couple of hours now, and while I think the documentation is really great, I am still left a bit confused on how to implement the system that I need.
I have to stream info, from a game engine, to a list of computers over tcp. One snag is that, unlike traditional pub/sub, the computer that does the distribution of info is actually the computer that has to connect to the subscribers as well (instead of the subscribers registering with the publisher). This is done via a config file - a list of ip's/ports along with the data that they each require. The subscribers listen, but do not know the ip of the publisher. (As a side note, I'm quite new to network programming, so maybe I'm missing something .. but it's strange that I do not find much information regarding this style of "inverted" client-server model..)
I am looking for suggestions for the implementation of such a system using boost asio. Of course I have to integrate the networking into an already existing engine, so with regards to that:
What would be a good way to handle messages being sent to multiple computers every frame? Use async_write, call io_service.run and then reset every frame? Would having io_service.run have its own thread be better? Or should I just use threads and use blocking writes?
