Client-server network configurations for gaming systems

This application claims the priority benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/696,679 filed Jul. 5, 2005, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

The inventive subject matter relates generally to the field of gaming, and more particularly to systems and methods for arranging, interconnecting and operating gaming systems.

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material to which the claim of copyright protection is made. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by any person of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office file or records, but reserves all other rights whatsoever. Copyright 2006, WMS Gaming, Inc.

Casino gaming machines are subjected to rigorous regulation in a typical gaming jurisdiction. These regulations are designed to eliminate or at the very least reduce fraud or cheating, both of the games and of the public. For example, these regulations may require that the software for a gaming machine is carefully controlled such that there is little or no possibility that it can be tampered with between the time it is burned or copied into the storage medium and the time it is fetched by a gaming machine for use in controlling the operation of the machine. For instance, regulations may require that the gaming software be copied onto the storage medium in a secure environment and brought to and installed in the target gaming machine in a secure fashion. Thus, updated gaming software may have to be written to a tamper proof read only memory device within the confines of a secure facility, and taken under lock and key to a gaming machine to be installed by authorized personnel only. Further, there is typically a mechanism or process by which gaming authorities can test to see that the software installed in a particular gaming machine has been approved by gaming regulators, and is not an unauthorized version. Thus, updating gaming software, for example, to correct a bug or to provide an enhanced, modified or new gaming experience to a user, can be burdensome.

Other problems faced in connection with gaming machine technology is the need to handle failures of software or hardware in a gaming machine. If a player has credits on a machine, and the machine fails during play, the player\'s credits may be “lost” in that the software registering the credits may crash or the memory storing the credit information may fail. These types of failures are to be avoided as much as possible both because of the inconvenience and losses suffered by the affected player but also due to the potential for fraudulently induced failures that may be used to steal money from a player.

In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which are shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the inventive subject matter can be practiced. It is understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. The leading digit(s) of reference numbers appearing in the Figures generally corresponds to the Figure number in which that component is first introduced, such that the same reference number is used throughout to refer to an identical component which appears in multiple Figures. Signals and connections may be referred to by the same reference number or label, and the actual meaning will be clear from its use in the context of the description.