The research community has proposed several techniques for estimating the quality of network paths in terms of delay and capacity. However, few techniques have been studied in the context of large deployed applications. Network gaming is an application that is extremely sensitive to network path quality [1,2,3]. Yet, the quality of network paths among players of large, wide-area games and techniques for estimating it have not received much attention from the research community. Network games broadly fall into two categories. In some games (e.g. MMORPGs, web-based casual games, Quake) with a client-server architecture, players communicate with a large, well-provisioned, and dedicated game server [4,5]. In some games with a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, players communicate with each other directly or via a dynamically chosen peer at some player's house. In Ghost Recon, Halo series, and others for the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles, a server assists players in discovering other peers to host and play with.
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