Shorthair has been deprecated by CauchyCaterpillar

Please check out the newer codec here: https://github.com/catid/CauchyCaterpillar

Shorthair Low-Latency Networking

Shorthair is a portable C++ library uses the Longhair library to provide low-latency loss-recovery, which uses extra bandwidth to make almost any unreliable packet channel suitable for real-time communication.

Erasure codes in software are fast with low-overhead.

Advantages of using erasure codes in online games:

• 50% faster delivery over UDP than over TCP

• 50% less bandwidth used than naive redundancy

• 50% better recovery rate than parity redundancy

Improves the experience for multiplayer mobile apps.

Please take a look at my presentation on Erasure codes for more motivation: Erasure Codes in Software

Features

It is designed for applications that send no more than 2000 packets per second (about 2 MB/s). Beyond that, it will hit asserts and not be able to protect the traffic.

• Full-duplex communication over a lossy channel.
• Automatically calculates the amount of redundancy to add based on channel conditions.
• Uses a fast Reed-Solomon block codec: Longhair
• It supports variable-length data packets.
• Overhead is 5 bytes/packet.

Usage

Step 1: Add the source code to your project. #include "Shorthair.hpp"

Step 2: Your C++ code should have a class instance that derives from IShorthair and implements its interface:

class MyClass : public IShorthair
{
	void OnPacket(u8 *packet, int bytes) override
	{
		// Called with the latest data packet from remote host
	}

	void OnOOB(u8 *packet, int bytes) override
	{
		// Called with the latest OOB packet from remote host
	}

	void SendData(u8 *buffer, int bytes) override
	{
		// Send raw data to remote host over UDP socket
	}
...

Step 3: Create a Shorthair object on the server and client side. Initialize it with some settings for your application:

    cat::shorthair::ShorthairCodec CodecObject;

    Settings settings;
    settings.min_fec_overhead = 0.1f; // 10%+
    settings.max_delay = 100; // 100 milliseconds
    settings.max_data_size = 1400; // Normal UDP packet
    settings.interface_ptr = &myClass; // Pointer to IShorthair object

    CodecObject.Initialize(settings);

Step 4: When sending a FEC-protected packet, call the ShorthairCodec::Send method. When sending an unprotected packet, call the ShorthairCodec::SendOOB() method:

    char message[3] = {};
    CodecObject.Send(message, sizeof(message));

Packets sent with Send can still be duplicated by the network, but they will be protected by FEC and be much less likely to be lost.

    char message[3] = {};
    CodecObject.SendOOB(message, sizeof(message));

Packets sent with SendOOB will not be protected by FEC. It is appropriate to send statistics and data that changes every packet with SendOOB.

It's safe to call the Send functions from any thread.

Step 5: Periodically call ShorthairCodec::Tick(). Around a 10-20 ms interval is best.

Step 6: When a packet is received, call ShorthairCodec::Recv() with the raw UDP packet data.

The ShorthairCodec object is not thread-safe, so be sure to hold a lock if multiple threads are using it.

Credits

Software by Christopher A. Taylor mrcatid@gmail.com

Please reach out if you need support or would like to collaborate on a project.