Home » Glossary Terms » Session hosting

Session hosting

Session hosting is when a server, or computer, runs your game’s matches. Each match, with a set group of people, is considered a session. And session hosting is where that match is taking place.

We use this term for running multiplayer games

Think of a match for Call of Duty. You’ll have 150 players in that one instance, with a time limit of 40 to 60 minutes. This is what we would call a session.

There are different ways to host your sessions

For that session to run, you’ll need to host it somewhere, ideally close to the players so they don’t experience lag or bad gameplay. And there are different types of servers you can use to host your game, depending on what you need.

Related Terms

Bare-metal servers

A bare-metal server is a physical machine which lives inside a data centre. It’s a place where you’ll host your games matches and sessions.

Client-server architecture

Client-server architecture is where you have external machines that host your game’s server and players can connect to it.

Cloud servers

Your cloud server is a virtual server. It runs in a cloud computing environment, and it's a place where you’ll host your games’ matches and sessions.

Latency

Latency is how fast data is moving. How quickly does it get from point A to point B? (And it’s generally measured in milliseconds.)

Matchmaker

Your matchmaker decides which players to group up for a session. It grabs information from each player and then runs it through a set of rules to figure out the best possible match.

Peer-to-peer architecture

Peer-to-peer is when you designate one player as the host of a session, and the other players connect to their machine. Whereas client-side servers are external machines which hosts your game’s sessions.