Someone can be in New York and another person in Sydney or something like that and be interacting with each other instantly from across the world. How can we connect so fast and how does the connection know to keep that connection with just me and him and not get interrupted
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These days, games connect to a server that acts as middle man for all people in the match. The server not only keeps track of who scores, when the game starts etc, but also relays messages between players.
If you type in chat within a game, that message goes to the server into a message “pool” that is continuously checked by all the other players. Did a new message enter the pool? Then all other (or the addressed) players running game will grab that piece of text and display within their running game.
With audio it’s different. The sound is often peer-to-peer; meaning it does not go to a central pool but it will be sent to one or more people directly just like a telephone line. It does so by your (and their) IP address; a unique number ID of your system on the internet. Kinda like a phone number.
There is a small delay between sending and receiving, and it’s called latency. This is usually between 0.1 sec ~ 1sec and has to do with the data traveling through the internet at lightning speeds.
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