To keep it simple I will describe the difference between playing Call of Duty 4 on an xBox (which relies on P2P serving) and then on a PC (which (for the purpose of this example) will rely on dedicated serving).
On an xBox360 your online experience would go a little something like this:
- You fire up the multiplayer and click "find game" at which point you are given a list of "game types" to choose from. Some examples would be "Hard core Team death match", "Domination", "Old school free for all" etc.
- Once you choose what kind of game you "feel like" out of a list of pre-defined game types the next screen you will see is what's called a "lobby".
- You will then sit in this "lobby" waiting for your xbox to find you a group of people who are also waiting to play that game type.
- Once your lobby is "full" (as determined by the game type you chose to play) it's
almost ready to throw you into the game.
This is where I get to the nitty gritty of what a P2P server is so make sure you read this 
:
- Now RIGHT before it throws you into the game something interesting happens - and what I'm about to describe is what makes your console P2P:
- Obviously there has to be SOME point of contact that all the people in the lobby connect to otherwise we would have no way of communicating with each other (this is called the host or the server. So what the xBox does to determine the host is calculate which single person in that lobby has the "fastest" connection to everyone else in the lobby.
*** So for arguments sake let's say there's three people in the lobby - I live in Perth, you live in Adelaide and one other person lives in Sydney. Now let's assume we ALL have the exact same internet and speed. Presumably YOU will be chosen as the host as you will provide the shortest pings to both me and the other person.
*** Either way, if you're playing a game on an xBox I would be willing to bet 99% of the community in Australia are running them off basic home connections. The fastest being ADSL2+. So in essence the ABSOLUTE max speed of the server is going to be some piss-ant, residential connection with AT LEAST 3-4 hops before it even connects to your 3rd Tier ISP.
Now on a PC your online experience would go a little something like this:
- You fire up the multiplayer and click "find game". You're given a relatively blank screen with a few buttons such as "refresh server list", "Filters", "Manual connect" etc.
- The first thing you want to do if you feel like a casual game with some randoms is click "refresh server list".
- For CoD4 at the moment your screen will then fill up with a selection of around 15,000 servers to choose from - usually sorted by "ping".
- "15,000!!! OMG, how will I ever choose one" you say. You then cycle through which game type you feel like playing from "free for all" to "Search and Destroy". You then click on "filters" and choose it NOT to show you any servers that are full, empty or require a password. You also choose it to show only
DEDICATED servers (I will explain what this means in a moment).
- You also choose it to filter out the servers that use kill cam coz you're a new player so you like to see how you're getting killed, and you choose it to NOT be "old school mode" (coz we all know that just sucks
).
- You then look at the new, more refined list of servers (there might now be 500 to choose from). You then look a little close and notice that about 40 servers will provide you a ping bellow 100ms (a PERFECTLY acceptable ping for playing an FPS). As you're a new player you don't want to be getting raped every 3 seconds so you now notice that out of those 40 servers 10 have a MAX of 12 players in them at any one time.
- You then choose one of those servers at random knowing full well that if after one round you really don't like the people in that server you have 9 other ones you can easily connect to.
*** So that was an example of the
EXPERIENCE you will have playing on PC. Now, I said above that you noticed ~40 servers are providing you with a ping of bellow 100ms. The way most of these servers are are providing <100ms to just about anyone in Aust. is because they are dedicated. So what does that mean?:
This is where I get to the nitty gritty of what a dedicated server is so make sure you read this :
*** Essentially a dedicated server is run off of a computer that has been set up to ONLY host servers (ie. you don't actually play in the server you're hosting with the computer that's hosting it). Although I can make a dedicated server on my home PC with an ADSL1 1.5mbps connection the one's you are interested in (as in the ones that are providing <100ms) are often hosted on University computers or even by the ISPs themselves. As we're all aware Telstra own all the SUPER fast fibre optic cables that connect the north to the south to the east to the west of Australia. If you can imagine either Telstra (or one of their subsidiaries) putting aside one computer SOLELY for hosting a CoD4 dedicated server on the fibre optic network you know you will essentially be getting fantastic pings (along with everyone else in Australia) in that server. This is what Games.on.net do, this is what big ISPs like Westnet and IInet do, and this is what any intelligent company will program into their game so as to not have a petition with over 150,000 pissed off potential customers who are all threatening to cancel their pre-orders.
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Originally Posted by taboo_ 
That's not how it happens at all. If they were just keys generated by a hacker's program then they wouldn't work online. This kid is a reliable source and VERY entrepreneurial - don't ask me how but he has contacts with program distributors so his keys are actually initially bought off the companies that make the programs/games.
). On top of this they have removed the ability to lean (something the PC version always had over the consoles) but I guess they have designed the game around this... still it's always a nice feature for MP 
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