Distributed Virtual Environments (DVEs), such as online games, military simulations, collaborative design, etc., are very popular nowadays. To support large-scale DVEs, a multi-server architecture is usually employed, and the virtual world is partitioned into multiple zones for load distribution. The client assignment problem arises when assigning the participating clients to the servers. Current approaches usually assign clients to servers according to the locations of clients in the virtual world, i.e., clients interacting in the same zone of the virtual world will be assigned to the same server. This approach may degrade the interactivity of DVEs if the network delay from a client to its assigned server is large. In this paper, we formulate the client assignment problem, and propose two algorithms to assign clients to servers in a more efficient way. The proposed algorithms are based on the heuristics developed for the well-known Terminal Assignment problem. Simulation results with the BRITE Internet Topology Generator show that our algorithms are effective in enhancing the interactivity of DVEs.
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