Saturday, July 08, 2006

Working to bring interoperability of communication standards to the gaming
industry; the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) has released its Multicast
Transport Standard. The standard specifies and describes the transport
mechanism used to send messages from protocols like GSA's Game-to-System
(G2S) and System-to-System (S2S). The new standard is available for free
download today at GSA's website. The standard supports message broadcast
i.e.: the same message can be sent from one host to many devices at once.
Multicast messaging capability represents a clear advantage for uses such as
updating progressive signs, as it allows for a reduction of network traffic
as compared to using a point-to-point protocol for this type of
communication.

Line Robichaud, principal software analyst for GSA member company GTECH and
chair of GSA's Transport Committee said, "GSA's G2S and S2S protocols define
messages. What has been needed is a standard that clearly defines how
broadcast messages will be sent, and the Multicast Transport Standard does
just that."

The next task for GSA's Transport Committee is a point-to-point
specification for individual messaging.