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Hello I'm new here my name is Mervin,

I'm creating a 3D online game in C# (everything is going well so far don't need to discuss it ;) )

And I am building a TCP server for it in C# (Visual C#.NET)
The server needs to be able to handle 1500 simultaneous connections without crashing.

My question is: What would be the best way to do this?

I need to have access to every socket that is created (they can be put in a list) . And every socket (Client) needs to have their own instance of a class.. making 1500 threads won't work i think because windows won't like that.

what would be the most efficient way of doing this?.
I don't need a full code example, just some ideas would be highly appreciated ;) .

Thanks in advance,
Mervin :)

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Dani AI

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— 1500 simultaneous TCP clients is perfectly achievable in C# without spawning 1500 threads. 's pointer is helpful; the practical, scalable approach is to let the OS handle I/O (IOCP) and to use asynchronous sockets with a small, reusable object/buffer pool rather than one thread per connection.

Use SocketAsyncEventArgs (SAEA) and a preallocated buffer pool (or ArrayPool in modern .NET). Keep a lightweight per-connection state object that references the SAEA instance and any game-specific state; store those in a ConcurrentDictionary or similar for quick lookup. Accept connections with a single asynchronous AcceptAsync loop, grab a SAEA from the pool, attach the accepted Socket, and start ReceiveAsync. Reuse SAEA objects for send/receive to avoid allocations and GC pressure. Tune socket options (NoDelay, linger, receive/send buffer sizes) carefully for the game's messaging pattern.

A minimal pattern (conceptual) looks like this:

int maxClients = 1500;
int bufSize = 4096;
var saeaPool = new ConcurrentStack<SocketAsyncEventArgs>();
var arrayPool = System.Buffers.ArrayPool<byte>.Shared;

for (int i = 0; i < maxClients; i++) {
  var s = new SocketAsyncEventArgs();
  s.SetBuffer(arrayPool.Rent(bufSize), 0, bufSize);
  s.Completed += IO_Completed;
  saeaPool.Push(s);
}

/* accept loop: AcceptAsync -> on complete pop saea, set AcceptSocket, call ReceiveAsync */

Practical tips and traps: pre-allocate buffers to avoid LOH churn, monitor handle/socket counts and memory, avoid locking hot paths (use lock-free queues or ConcurrentQueue), and measure GC/CPU. On Windows the scalability bottleneck is usually memory/GC or app-level locking, not sockets per se; if running on Linux, remember to raise ulimit -n. For implementation details and examples see the official docs on SocketAsyncEventArgs and the asynchronous server pattern: SocketAsyncEventArgs class and Asynchronous Server Socket Example.

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Member Avatar for MervinKoops

Thanks! :)

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