Also a little factoid here, dedicated servers (yes, even for games) initially came about because it of often too heavy a burden on older systems to run the server/client networking code as well as the game software, so the dedicated server would run ONLY the server software and connecting clients needed only run client side software, alleviating the resource requirements.
In this day and age, the resources saved not running server-end code locally are next to nothing.
in modern day networking for consoles, you have as follows:
Dedicated:
Client > route via ISP to game service > Game service route to dedicated server > In/out transmitted to connected clients via each client ISP > Client
Intermittent checks from clients to dedicated server, intermittent checks from dedicated server to game service.
P2P:
Client > route via ISP to game service > Game service connects client to other clients (Client-connect handoff), best detected speed of client set as host, all other players connect directly.
Intermittent verification checks for clients to game service.
What's the end difference?, ultimately, the difference is just that the host is the dedicated server by default, in theory this means "always has good connection", in practice this means "always has good connection, if your ISP's route to it is good, and if the server is even up"
For P2P, the person with the best connection is host, and connecting clients bypass the additional route from game service to dedicated server, it has it's drawbacks of course, you will occasionally get low speed players joining your game and having bad lag, but this happens on dedicated servers anyway.
The only worthwhile use of dedicated servers is when the game needs persistent storage of user-interactable content, content that needs to be identical for all connecting clients.
p.s. when dedicated servers get turned off, you're fucked, p2p based networked games last until people stop playing completely, go fire up quake 1 on PC, and even now, to this day, you will find people running P2P multiplayer servers.







