Glossary

Protocol And Transport

Protocol — Shared registry of components, resources, messages, requests, and channels. Both sides must build the same protocol.

ProtocolId — Deterministic hash of the protocol. A mismatch rejects the handshake.

Channel — Named lane for messages with reliability/ordering settings.

Transport — Network layer below naia. Shipped features are WebRTC, UDP, and local in-process transport.

WebRTC — Encrypted data-channel transport used by naia for native and Wasm clients.

RTT — Round-trip time.

Jitter — Variation in packet delay.

Entity — A world object registered with naia for replication.

Component — Replicated data attached to an entity.

Property<T> — Change-detection wrapper for replicated component fields.

Replicated resource — Singleton value replicated through a hidden one-component entity.

Delta compression — Sending changed fields instead of full component state.

Static entity — Entity that sends one full snapshot on scope entry and does not diff-track after that.

Room — Coarse interest group. A user and entity must share a room before the entity can replicate to that user.

UserScope — Per-user visibility filter applied after rooms.

ScopeExit — Despawn-or-persist behavior when an entity leaves a user’s scope.

Server-owned — Ordinary server-spawned replicated state; clients observe but do not directly write.

Client-authoritative entity — Opt-in entity created/owned by a client and replicated to the server.

Publicity — Client-owned entity state: Private, Public, or Delegated.

Authority delegation — Server-owned entity/resource mode where a client may temporarily hold write authority.

Granted / Denied / Available — Client-visible authority states for delegated objects.

Tick — Simulation heartbeat.

TickBuffered — Channel mode that stamps messages with the client tick and delivers them at the matching server tick.

Confirmed entity — Server-replicated entity used as the authoritative local copy in prediction.

Predicted entity — Client-local duplicate that runs ahead using local input.

local_duplicate() — Helper that creates a local predicted copy of a replicated entity.

Rollback — Reset to confirmed state at a past tick, then replay buffered inputs.

Historian — Server-side rolling snapshot buffer used for lag compensation.

Bandwidth budget — Target outbound bytes per second for a connection.

Priority accumulator — Per-entity/per-user priority state used to decide what fits in the current budget.

Token bucket — Budget mechanism that accumulates send capacity over time.

Bit-packing — Serializing at bit granularity instead of byte granularity.

zstd — Optional packet compression algorithm with dictionary support.