Packet Loss and Network Settings

I seemed to have joined SL at a bad time... in the month-ish I've been here, there've been so many problems I can't even tell what's a me-problem, what's a Mac-problem, what's an SL-problem, and what's a latest-upgrade-problem. So bear with me here, if you please.

First, can anyone recommend strategies for dealing with packet loss? I seem to get nothing but -- I'm yellow or red more often than not. I suspect I just have a bad connection, but since I can't change that, is there anything I can do to minimize its effects? What are the settings in Preferences that could help? "Maximum Bandwidth" in particular doesn't make sense to me -- I want SL to use all the bandwidth it can grab, don't I?
I'm already used to turning the draw distance down when I'm not going to need it higher; is there anything else I can do? I think I read something about turning off flexi viewing, but I don't remember where I read it or how it said to do it. What about the client menu, is there anything there maybe?

I seem to have been roped into leading a discussion session, so although I'd be grateful for general tips, too, I'm especially looking for tips targeted to that environment -- staying in the same place, some avatar movement, lots of chat. I'm using Tiger on a pre-Intel Mac mini.

Second, I'd really like to lose my current BellSouth connection and go with the nonprofit ISP in my area, but they only offer wireless and I've heard bad things about wireless with SL. Is it really that much of a problem?

Thanks.

Packet loss

Open a terminal window, and enter

ping -c 100 www.secondlife.com

This will run for a few minutes, and then report packet loss. Try it again with some other web site such as google.com, or what have you.

If packet loss is roughly the same for each, then it is you or your isp, not Linden Lab.

I think the reason you might limit bandwidth is that if SL tries to send you too much, your computer and network start getting behind, which means more packets get lost, which means packets get resent, which just makes thing worse. In particular, your old mini is not the ideal machine for SL, having a poor 3D graphics card. It was not designed for 3D, period.

Good luck. I just upgraded my SL machine from an old emac to a hot laptop, and I am enjoying it very much.

ping -c ? I think ping -n is the option you'd want to use.

Hmm.. Great Questions..where to start? and what do I know anything about?...
I'm on an Intel Mac Mini running Tiger for the last 8 months or so. I have DSL.
The weeks from mid-November to early December were atypically awful. Things are better now, lets hope they stay that way (or improve!).

But, from experience prior to the last month, here's what I've found:
1. Absolutely pay the extra money to get as MUCH RAM into your mini as it will swallow. I have 2 Gig. Wish it would take more. This is partly to offset the poor graphics chip in the mini, and also because SL itself likes a lot of RAM.
2. Turn off (in SL Prefs, Graphics Detail) the Shaders for Water Ripples and BumpMapping. Turn the draw distance down to 64. I've played around with the other settings, and ended up leaving most of them pretty close to their defaults. The speed increase is not worth the quality drop. (your mileage may vary).
3. If you have a really nice 1280x1024 flat screen, consider a serious picture degradation...drop down to 'fullscreen' mode (do not "run SL in a window" AND do so at 800x640. Its ugly as hell, but much faster. Do the math, and you'll see that the lower rez screen is less than half the pixels of the nice display. And since the mini processes all those pixels from its main ram over its standard system bus, and not from a dedicated graphics card like the big guys, the Mini has to work really really hard to push the pretty high rez graphics around. The crummy picture means more speed.

4. For the "Network Bandwidth", I've finally settled on 120. (I have 1.5M DSL...with tested throughput in the 1.3Meg range). 120 is the speed at which I RARELY get red in the right hand thermometer and never in the left (unless something is seriously wrong--like the last month! LOL). The second thermometer occasionally goes to yellow. Faster speeds lead to more packet loss. Lee's right in his summary. Lost packets need to be re-transmitted, and at some point, that just clogs everything up with redundant data...occasional lost packets are okay--but pegging the gauge on RED is not good.

As for your other concerns, maybe someone else can chime in. IMHO, they don't matter. What YOU see on YOUR screen is NOT what your discussion group will see. A lot of what's happening in your 'viewer' is being processed locally by your mini. Others will have their own hardware setup.

Get yourself a chair, and sit down. encourage everyone else to do so. Discourage Scripted Items--for you and your group. Don't hold the discussion surrounded by Winged Angels, Sploders, Chatting Greeter Robots, etc. Find a nice, quiet, FAST, SIM with no distractions. That will do a lot for you AND the other discussion group folks.

Good luck!

These are good tips. I am running a PowerBook G4, and am experiencing the same issues with packet loss. I use several different internet connection, since I am on a laptop, and it always seems to give me the same issues and problems. I will try out the new settings, and see if they work. Thanks!

I have a white intel Macbook with 1 gig memory on a broadband cable and have found that I get best results with the network setting as high as it will go 1500. When I set it below 200, everthing gets really slow and the packet loss goes up in busy sims.
The telling factor seems to be people with wings in nightclubs, at the 1500 setting the wings rez (but the constent motion of them causes some problems, setting below 200 and the wings never do rez, just gray blocks.

Yes...wings are bad...even on angels
In a club, you can reduce your draw distance. Who needs to see beyond 64m in a club???
This will usually let the wings appear. Also, clicking on the gray boxed wings will often make them rez--Do this at your own risk, though, as some Wings are Xcite-able

To get textured objects to load without triggering anything, *alt* click on them to "focus" on them, which will move them up in the "interest list" without notifying any scripts in them.

Rihanna,

Hi,

Tory here from your Huntsman Owners group. Small world! I use two Macs. A iBook G4 with 880 processor which I use wireless and an iMac Intel Duo with 2 gigs of ram which is hardwired to the modem. Naturally the iMac does better.

I am suprised that the iBook works at all, but it does pretty well excepting slow keyboard response with chat and IM.

I am using the Fiber Optic connection from Verizon which is fabulous! Its 10 kps or something outrageous. I believe that is why the iBook works.

The only persistant problem I see is IF a chat or IM window is open I can not move the avatar. I must close the window and then move. Sometimes If I click out on the screen it can get a jump start and start moving. This is with the iMac also.

I know this did not address your problems. The wireless works well inside the house. I don't think a satelite would work with a bean.

-Tory
http://picasaweb.google.com/tory.micheline

Hi, Tory -- thanks for reminding me of this thread! I'd actually forgotten all about it. It was my first venture into the forums here, and I'd forgotten it wasn't MacRumors and I wouldn't get email replies until I set them up in the CP. So when nothing appeared in my mail, I thought no one had replied.

Thanks for the tips, all, even if I didn't read them until now. Especially the explanation of the lost-packet-resending.

Upgrading my Mini isn't an option right now; frankly, I was shocked that SL ran on it at all, but since it does, of course I want to make the best of it. And losing too much picture quality isn't a route I want to go -- if the images aren't worth looking at, I might as well as go work on my MUCK (which would be cheaper anyway, and there I own as much land as I want!). But the lag has gotten a little better over the past month, except during concurrency peaks. I've gotten used to using the Client menu to turn off flexi, particles, and clouds, and to keeping the draw distance at 64 most of the time.

And to shopping on SLX! I haven't found anything yet that makes in-world shopping less than a rezzing nightmare. Unfortunately, alt-click focusing rarely helps me rez things. I seem to have very little control over my camera functions; it looks like maybe my sucky connection is somehow garbling the camera commands? I did all the tutorials, read the help files, took a few classes, and just couldn't understand why I couldn't get the hang of the keyboard camera commands. Then I discovered the Camera Controls in the menu and found out why -- because the camera commands aren't consistently doing what they are supposed to! I can click on the rotate-left arrow 5 times, and it will rotate the camera left maybe twice, rotate up once, slide down once, and zoom out once. And it ignores or mutates alt-clicks just as often. So I've kind of given up on the camera making sense. Still, SL is worth the frustration.