Editing Netrek (section)

==Technological innovations==
''Netrek'' pioneered the use of many technologies and design features that later found their way into commercial network games, including:
* The efficient use of fast but unreliable [[User Datagram Protocol|UDP]] packets as well as reliable but slower [[Transmission Control Protocol|TCP]] streams. It was probably the first game to use both types of [[Internet Protocol]] packets.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/usr/jch/netrek/udp |title=Andy McFadden's UDP client, the wave of the future}}</ref>
* A robust [[client–server]] model that reduces the data exchange to "need to know" information, limiting both the required [[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]] and the opportunities for players to cheat by obtaining more knowledge of the game world than their opponents.
* Persistent account information where players can create a "character", and log in and gain ranks over multiple games.
* Game mechanics designed to reduce the ability of assisted or robot player [[aimbot]]s (referred to as borgs) to gain a significant advantage over a human player.
* An anti-cheating mechanism using an [[RSA (algorithm)|RSA]]-based [[public key cryptography]] authentication system that also attempts (with limited success) to detect and prevent [[man-in-the-middle attack]]s.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/usr/jch/netrek/rsa |title=The new RSA blessing scheme for clients}}</ref>
* Multiple game variants played by the same client, with the server telling the client what game features are supported.
* The use of metaservers, servers designed to help clients locate available game servers.
* [http://www.netrek.org/ Netrek Nexus], a web site about playing and programming Netrek launched in January 1994, originally hosted by the University of Arizona and maintained by [[Jeff Nelson (inventor)|Jeff Nelson]], was the 779th web site submitted to the [[World Wide Web Worm]], an early search engine.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/mirrors/bb/13/10/summary.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020823120622/http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/mirrors/bb/13/10/summary.html |archive-date=23 August 2002 |url-status=dead |title=Lists of WWW Home pages not yet known to the WWWW Worm}}</ref>