Not sure if this has been posted before but I stumbled across an article on the official UK PlayStation website yesterday. If you do a search in Google for "gt5 prologue online help" (including the speech marks), Google will return the following:
uk.playstation.com/games-media/news/ articles/detail/item98146/GT5-Prologue-online-help/
But as you'll see, this article no longer exists.
Now, I remember the article basically described the 2 networking methods the game uses to enable players from around the world to race with each other. For those of you who know a little about networks, they are sometimes referred to as "network topologies". And the 2 that were listed were Star and Fully Connected.
Star
The Star topology is the most commonly used for online gaming in general, but the interesting thing in the article was that the server wasn't actually a dedicated gaming server belonging to Sony or PD; GT5
actually determines which online players have sufficient bandwidth to act as the server/host and, over time, builds up a list of these players so that it can set them up as servers/hosts for other players to connect to.
In other words, the article suggested dedicated Sony/PD servers don't exist at all for hosting racing, just for managing hosts and clients.
Fully Connected
There isn't actually any individual host with this topology. There's a lot more data flying about with this topology but it can be more reliable, i.e. clients can continue playing regardless of any other client disconnecting, whereas with the Star topology, if the host disconnects, all other players are also disconnected.
I thought about this after I read the article and realised it probably is true. It explains why in some instances all players are disconnected from a race randomly, whereas in others, you can be the only one left in the race driving on your own (although you don't win any credits after finishing).
I wonder why they took down the article? Probably because they realised they don't want us to know this info?
uk.playstation.com/games-media/news/ articles/detail/item98146/GT5-Prologue-online-help/
But as you'll see, this article no longer exists.
Now, I remember the article basically described the 2 networking methods the game uses to enable players from around the world to race with each other. For those of you who know a little about networks, they are sometimes referred to as "network topologies". And the 2 that were listed were Star and Fully Connected.

Star
The Star topology is the most commonly used for online gaming in general, but the interesting thing in the article was that the server wasn't actually a dedicated gaming server belonging to Sony or PD; GT5
In other words, the article suggested dedicated Sony/PD servers don't exist at all for hosting racing, just for managing hosts and clients.
Fully Connected
There isn't actually any individual host with this topology. There's a lot more data flying about with this topology but it can be more reliable, i.e. clients can continue playing regardless of any other client disconnecting, whereas with the Star topology, if the host disconnects, all other players are also disconnected.
I thought about this after I read the article and realised it probably is true. It explains why in some instances all players are disconnected from a race randomly, whereas in others, you can be the only one left in the race driving on your own (although you don't win any credits after finishing).
I wonder why they took down the article? Probably because they realised they don't want us to know this info?