Overview of DirectPlay Communications
DirectPlay's default mode of communications is peer-to-peer. In this model, the session's complete state is replicated on all the computers in the session. This means that the session description data, the list of players and groups, and the names and remote data associated with each session are duplicated on every computer. When one computer changes something, it is immediately propagated to all the other computers.
DirectPlay's alternative mode of communications is client/server. In this model, only the server stores the session's complete state and each client has only a subset of the session's state. Each client has only the information that is relevant to that computer and receives that information from the server. When one computer changes something, it propagates the change to the server. The server then determines which clients it must inform of the change.
An application can manage its own data using either a client/server model or peer-to-peer model, but this will not change how the underlying DirectPlay session state is managed.
The following sections discuss the two modes of communications within DirectPlay sessions: