More than one account in a household crashes us

Why can't 2 people who live in the same household play together without crashing every few minutes? My girlfriend and I came over from There to check out SL, and have nothing but issues when we both log in?

We were told to get a second IP number. Helloooo, that would be 15 bucks more each months on top of the account fees. I don't think that will please customers who share an internet connection.

Friends who live together in one household too wanted to give it a try, but won't now after seeing this when visiting us. I know of quite a few family members who played There together. Does SL want to lose the business of those people too?

So much for trying SL! Too bad that I got the Thereian special deal for 3 months. I wouldn't if I had known about this issue. And I will make sure that others in the same boat won't get tricked into SL.

Dream "pissed off" Daguerre

We had a similar problem that was solved by upgrading the firmware on our router. Its a router by Linksys.

The crux of the problem is that, for performance reasons, SL often uses UDP (User Datagram Protocol) to communicate between sim and client. Some routers are better than others at making sure UDP packets get routed to the appropriate PC behind the router.

This issue has been addressed before. Check out /111/f4/10144/1.html for a discussion of router firmware.

You might also look into possible port-mapper issues. This would mean doing a bit of setup on the router to specify the ports. This issue has been discussed at /111/d5/11851/1.html

Don't give up on SL yet. It took me some effort ot solve the problems, but now we have multiple instances of SL running just fine. Its worth the hassle of configuring the router to handle SL.

Regards,

Ace

By comparison, my SMC router works perfectly, though if I recall, it didn't until I upgraded the firmware.

Dream,

i understand you're upset, but please don't get turned off so quickly. there is a possibility that it's not the fault of SL and is, as stated above, a simple matter of updating your firmware.

on a related note, what type of connection do you have? i'm assuming it's not dial-up.. but is it cable? DSL? this may contribute to the problem..

..you may do well to see if there's some sort of threshold you're coming up against with your ISP. if two connections are tripping the bandwicth limit, then that could cause the same problem.

i also suggest sending a letter poltely explaining your qualms to: [EMAIL]support@secondlife.com[/EMAIL]

let us know what happens.. and hopefuly we can welcome you to Second Life!

I'm having the exact same problem here..upgraded the firmware on my linksys, unfortunately its a ver. 2 router and about 2 years old and it didn't solve the problem, might have to pick up a newer one :/

Yes, if you have an older router, firmware updates won't help, a new router will be necessary.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to IM me in world...

Shouldn't It be as simple as setting ports forword for each ip address?

If you are both playing SL then you will both want access to the same ports. Port forwarding to one IP will ensure that SL works good for only one PC.

Same problem here, but dealing with it for now.

umm yes both computer want to use the same port. That's why you set up the router to forward all data for one computer to a new port. And the other computer to a diffrent port. That way sl server knows witch port to send what data to.

I've always explaned it like phone numbers. You have a a port and an ip, just like there is a phone number an an area code.

It's at least worth trying.

Thanks all for your replies! I'll look into your suggestions.

The connection is cable, the router is a one year old Linksys.
There's not bandwidth cap or throttling from the provider.

First time we had this issue, ever. No matter what we do here or which oneline games we played. Often 3 (or even 4 PC's) are online in this house/home office since 6 years, without any problems. Having to hassle with it still sux. <g>

Dream

Most online games use TCP (or IPX, for older games)

SL uses alot of UDP.

A lot of low-end or personal use hardware manufacturers seem to operate under the assumption that TCP is the only protocol used for data transfer on the Internet.

link sis support udp. Even the four year old models.

I have a 3 year old D-Link router. No problems running 2 machines with SL simultaneously. Yes, even older hardware can take it.

Okay, before we start a flame war here...

The Lindens have tested and it appears some Linksys routers (old or not I don't know) have troubles with UDP, the protocol SL uses.

Since most other online apps use TCP, most people are able to share their internet connections just fine for the most part.

The best advice here is to upgrade to the latest firmware for your router. And if this fails, contact Linden tech support by phone or email. They should be able to help you, or, they might suggest the last resort, buying a new router. Prices range from $20 to $150 depending on features and rebates and brand.

>>The best advice here is to upgrade to the latest firmware for your router. And if this fails, contact Linden tech support by phone or email.<<

I did upgrade and it didn't help alot. My girlfriend sent an email to tech support on June 1 and didn't get any reply yet.

Anyway, I read older forums threads and tried a few things, like updating the firmware and checkig and playing with router settings. And the following is what now keeps happening:

We don't crash anymore every 5 minutes, BUT only when we are not in the same place. When we are in the same place, we still crash after a few minutes.

When we are not in the same place we are able to stay inworld. But then a few things happen.

1. When we both are in IM with the same friend, the friend only gets an IM from one of us, never from both.

2. When we both are in the same shop and I buy an item, the money is taken from me but no item appears in neither my inventory or my girlfriends. This happened 3 times so far. I'm not eager to reproduce that bug again. <g>

3. Last night my girlfriend was 1500 m away from where I was and a friend gave her an item, but I got the system message that the friend had given the item to me. I got this message twice, although only one item was given. It then was neither in my nor her inventory.

4. We were both a the L$5 ATM (forgot the place's name) and we both withdraw L$5 from two different ATMs (which were recharged) at the same time. My girlfriend got the money and the system message, I got neither. Both ATM's showed L$ 5 less on the display after half a minute.

I really don't feel like buying a new router, just for SL. Our router is one year old and should be good to go with the latest firmware.

I will send this to tech support by email and see if they can come up with a solution. Right now our experience is not the best one. I simply don't like it when a company leaves it to the customers to fix their bugs and problems, like searching for workarounds or buying new hardware.

Anyway, thanks for the advise everybody.
Have a great weekend and second life.

Dream Daguerre

This entirely sounds like your router is not sending the right data to the right computers. My wife and I play on the same connection with no problems, although we once had problems with an old linksys. We replaced that router and have no more problems at all.

There are two primary types of data protocals for the internet: TCP and UDP. Most everything that is 'internet' is TCP, which is a connection based protocol - you connect to the server the get all the data. SL uses a lot of UDP which is a connectionless protocal. There are good reasons for this, as discussed in a thread somewhere else.

Some cheap or old routers don't have good implementations of UDP. They only work if only 1 computer is getting UDP information from a source, or work sporadically. A decent router, or almost any new router, should be able to handle multiple computers getting UDP data from the same source.

A poorly built router can not be the fault of LL. UDP is a standard protocal, SL is not doing something weird (in this case), and your router should handle it correctly. and send the right data to the right computer.