Framerate below 10 & Ping time over 600

I use to be able to use Second Life with about the normal amount of lag but the other night it came almost impossible to use. Barely anything is loading and its almost impossible to move.
The lag meter is red for client and it says "Client from rate below 10. Possible causes: Too many complex objects in scenes". And the Network is yellow and says "Connection ping time is over 600ms".
All of my graphics in the game are as low as possible. I would have normally thought it was because my graphic card sucks, but I've had SL for months and have been able to use it just fine.
And I'm not sure if this is relevant but when I restore SL after being minimized everything reads as being green and normal then goes back to red and yellow after like a second.
Oh and the FPS goes between 0.5 and 1.7 now.

Does anyone know whats going on?

Classic symptoms of your modem and router (if you have one) needing to be reset......or rebooted.

Shut down your computer, unplug the divices from their electrical source for 3 to 5 mins (5 is best) then plug them back in. Once the little lights settle to their normal blinking boot up your computer and try logging in.

A couple of times now, I've had the most horrid network lag, in the red and staying there. I shut down my system every morning before I go to work, and I've reset my modem more times than I can count (I even left it unplugged all afternoon last Saturday). But the network lag remains red. The message I get is "Bandwidth set too high or file-sharing application" (sorry, I probably don't have it quite right). It's just been the last few days - August 29 was the first time it happened. Anyone have any tips on what I can do next?

Low client frame rate is not caused by communications problems. (Long ping times are.) However, it's still worthwhile trying what Peggy said. I've never found a need to unplug for more than a moment; I wonder what timeout Peggy is expecting to take 5 minutes. It can't hurt to wait, though.

Is it possible that your computer is thrashing due to not enough memory?

What's your client frame rate in a sim with little or nothing in it?

Nightsong, perhaps your neighbors are hogging your bandwidth. See if you have better luck at off hours or in a fairly empty internet cafe.

There is, in fact, a reason I usually suggest the 3 to 5 min wait for rebooting of routers and modems (also there are times when you might need to "cold boot" your compuer itself....the same applies). You see, I am not a computer expert. When I have hardware issues that are persistant or recurring I tend to contact the technical support people who manufacture or develop the hardware device I'm having trouble with. I've been playing with computers for a while and have bumped into my share of issues over time...........I've talked to more than a few tech support people. I've had the unfortunate experience of owning a D-Link router in the past........had many conversations with D-Link's tech people. And every time they asked me to reset my router I was told to wait 3 to 5 mins. I always did that, but never knew why. However I finally got fed up with D-Link and got a Linksys router. Only issue I've had with Linksys before the latest router I got from them (the 430N model that has a know heating problem.....which I managed to overcome with a little creative use of a small book stand) was when I had to get the hardware firewall working again. The tech support person walked me through the configuration. One of the steps was reseting the router. He, too, said to leave it off for 3 to 5 minutes. Well, while I was waiting on the phone with him and the time to leapse I asked him why so long. He told me that for the transistors, capacitors, etc to completely dump what they need to dump that 1 minute is enough..........the additional time is for that stuff to cool down.

So that's the reason I say what I say. More than just few technicians who most likely know more than most anyone here about their products have told me to do that. I'll take their word over anyone here. You can do it anyway you want........1 min, 5 mins, or 24 hours. I'll follow the advice of the people who are trained to maintain the device or product in question.

So, now you know.

Check for spyware

sending a billion spam emails a second doesnt help

Thanks, Peggy. As a product development software engineer working for a major equipment vendor, I've worked with a number of first-level support staff, and often wonder where they get some of the crazy stuff they say. This bit about letting the parts cool down sounds suspect. However, you're doing the right thing by following the directions. Also, since a number of them from different companies say the same thing, it's quite likely that there is a good reason that I simply don't know.

If some chip is getting just a bit to hot and thus going just a bit insane, a few minutes of not stuffing power into will help. It might not help for long but it will help. I'd be annoyed with a service person saying to do that but not also giving me a brief lecture on the importance of keeping the dust bunnies out of electronics..

If you're with a big ISP, powering off the net gear for a few minutes also gives you a better chance of picking up a different IP address and may be easier than talking a non-technical person through release/renew. Not sure why it helped but I know I've seen a release/renew make a huge difference in network performance before..