LAG..Server Capacity

Hello. I have a question about Lag.

The other evening during the restarts, I logged in when there were only about 20K people online and my frame rate was 15, the highest it's ever been. Later, of course, it went back down to my usual 5 or less (I have an old computer and old graphics card and only 1M of memory so I'm used to that.) BUT.......it seems logical to assume that servers have different speeds/capacities.

I've seen it said by others on this forum and on the blog that the lab is not using enough server capacity/speed to run the grid efficiently. I know many of the causes of lag are client side issues. Yet, if the lab was using powerful enough servers, don't you think this would be a non issue?

So, what's the TRUTH (no propaganda please)?? I'm not really sure how servers work. Wouldn't one assume that if the money was spent by the lab on servers that were powerful/fast enough, that the grid would run and rez quickly regardless of how many were logged on or present in one location???

P.S. People with far better computers than I also experience the same rez issues, lag and freezing issues (being totally unable to move or type in chat in real time without up to a 60 second delay and resulting typos).
I find it hard to believe that the lab can blame all of this on clients not having super computers. I also find lag just as bad on full sims on one server. Does the lab really expect everyone to have only ocean in order to be able to enjoy SL?

There are many causes of lag, but what you point out is something we all experience.

SL works great when the concurrency is low. SL sucks when the concurrency is high.

The conclusion is obvious. LL does not have enough resources to run the service efficiently. When the load goes up to 65K or so, things start to go to hell.

That's exactly what I suspected. Why then would anyone invest real money in SL when its corporation is basically thumbing their noses at its residents? And they had the guts to raise prices earlier this year? And people paid up? I'm sorry...I'm not capable of comprehending this.

Why anyone would invest in SL considering the state that it's in, I've no idea, but I do know why people continue. It's because people actually like the SL environment and, whilst its borkiness annoys people, their like of the environment outweighs that annoyance.

Not everyone is like that and some do call it a day when LL do things but, on the whole, we put up with it.

That's several questions, and one erroneous statement. We invest money (and time and effort) in SL because it's fascinating, despite the idiots in San Francisco.

They didn't raise prices earlier this year. What they did in March was to raise the price of one particular land product, the Homestead region, and also placed additional limits on its use. They have announced plans to begin charging fees for listing items on XStreetSL too.

Many people did NOT pay up for the Homesteads, even though existing owners had the option of being grandfathered at the old monthly rate (but not at the old performance settings). See the long running thread, "How Many Islands have Gone So Far"? Thousands of regions disappeared from the grid.

Many more regions disappeared or have been abandoned due to the new Adult Content policies.

100,000 items have been withdrawn from XStreetSL.

Not to mention the creators who are increasingly frustrated by LL's unwillingness to give more than lip service to the protection of their intellectual property.

It's a testament to the compelling nature of this virtual world that so many people DO continue to log in.

So then why is my statement "they raised prices" erroneous? Raising fees and placing more limits on something IS a price increase.

Yes, I can see the compelling nature of SL. There is nothing else like it at all. Perhaps THAT (monopoly) is why the lab thumbs its noses at its residents..and they are..make no mistake about it...because they refuse to procure the necessary resources to run the grid efficiently.

The other things you mention are not nearly as important because
Lag affects everyone's quality of life here.

My experience is that general lag and grid stability is much better than it was 2+ years ago. The past few months, however, textures do seem to be rezzing for me a bit slower than in the beginning of the year, as well as experiencing more failed teleports.



This issue has been around, I think, since about May of this year, and as far as I know, is not really related to server power. It has to do with certain types of scripts an avatar wears in attachments. When an avatar wears attachments compiled in Mono, it tends to make the sim pause/freeze up when the avatar teleports in and out of region. And yes, it's *extremely* frustrating

You can read more about it here:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3895

and

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4196

Supposedly Babbage Linden has some fixes for this problem early next year.

Yes, but not across the board. The price increase did not affect the majority of Residents.

It's my belief that in SL we have a wide degree of freedom that has resulted in us doing things that wreck our own experience, then we blame LL. Yes, I'm sure they do things, too, that adversely affect us, as well as things that affect us positively. They couldn't know, years ago, that people would begin wearing hundreds of scripted prims and multiple scripted-to-the-gills HUDs, yet so far they have just gamely attempted to cope with what we do, and that can't be easy.

While this is absolutely true and I'm glad that somebody said it, I'm not willing to let them off easy. They've known about SVC-3895 for well over 6 months and have kept quiet about it, unless you dig through Babbages office hour transcripts.

As long as they're content to do that, I'm content to call them jerks for happily accepting my tier on a very broken product. Maybe I'm old and cynical but... These damn kids nowdays... I remember, back in the day, when LL would say things "woah.. this is unhappy.. please have patience while we get a grip on it!"

I'm much more likely to be patient if they actually admit there's a problem. Until then: jerks!

Server CPU performance is not the only factor in lag or lack thereof, but it certainly is part of it. The bulk of Second Life's servers are 2006-2007 vintage technology, while us residents have added flexi's, sculpts, and about doubled average sim script count on my personal observation since 2007.

Processor performance comparison:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html


Best I can tell, SL servers are Opteron 2218's, give or take a model number, which rates 1.3 on that chart (near the bottom).

My new home PC (Core i7 920) rates 5.4 That's the same generation (Nehalem) as the new servers that are supposed to be going in about now.

Other stuff that matters: How efficient the simulator code is, back-end databases, internal networking at Linden Lab, external networking to the rest of the internet.

From http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2006/10/17/looking-forward-to-class-5:

These are the sim hosts, though. We know that the back-end stuff also runs the sim software (er.. something like that anyway) but LL doesn't really talk about what sorta hardware it is. No reason (er.. aside from lag) to think they're stuck back in 2006 for the serious stuff.

I agree. That particular issue had a devastating effect upon my troupe's live performances until we figured it out and remedied it to a degree by cutting the audience number down, performing within the no-outside-scripts height limit, and so on. While most scripts people bring in still run, of course, the no-outside-scripts at least does a little bit to help. One day it will be fixed, I hope.

True enough. We are to blame for some of the lag. I have an absolutely gorgeous dress that I can't wear anywhere...because anywhere I show up while wearing it turns to mush.

The other night, I was dressed much as I normally am, not even wearing my pistol...and my friend got bored and turned on her ARC meter. One of us, a noob, had an ARC of about 700. My friend was about 1200 or so. Another friend was at about 4500.

Me? I hit well over 12,000!

This wasn't anything that actually caused a lot of lag. Almost all of it was in a piece of jewelry with absolutely tons of transparent textures, plus prim hair, also with lots of transparent textures.

My point is not that I'm a lag monster. The point is...we buy stuff and wear it, and never give a thought to what it may be doing to sim performance and our own, and others', SL experience.

Yoiks!

I just ran across this JIRA issue. Go vote for it if your region has been laggy lately (and whose hasn't?!)

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-5040

Some reasons have been mentioned. Another, very important reason, is that it's harder to leave once one has already invested a lot of money and time into Second Life. Leave Second Life, and all that prior investment is lost. For most people, the time (and emotional) investment is probably more significant than the monetary investment.

I'm sure many people are thinking they never would have gotten involved in Second Life in the first place if they knew this is how it would turn out. However, being already involved, it's better to try to continue to get something out of that time and money already invested than to abandon that investment.