can someone point me to a article on how multiplayer games work?? i mean that i know there is clients, and a server. the server services requests from clients. but how does it do it? how does the client ''pickup'' packets sent from the server on a lan? i think that with ethernet, everyone on the lan gets server advertisement packets, and only those who are actively looking for it respond. my rationale for this is i want to write a program to sniff the local lan for a quake server''s existence. if anyone knows of a program that does this already, and supplies source, let me know by posting here. thanks, wb

"i think that with ethernet, everyone on the lan gets server advertisement packets, and only those who are actively looking for it respond."

This depends on the underlying hardware of the network (wether you are using a hub or a switch) and also how you program the software.