Frozen av, bandwidth zero

This is making me crazy. I am getting constantly frozen, at random intervals, generally every 1-2 hours, every day, in any sim. Bandwidth drops to zero and there is no cure but to relog. Last night after it happened, I relogged and asked someone in the sim if it had just happened to her too, and she said no, it was just me. What is causing this and how can I prevent it? I am constantly disappearing in the middle of conversations which makes me look very rude, and it is so common that I have started preferencing every encounter with "if I disappear suddenly it isn't on purpose..."

I have had my broadband connection checked and they say it is fine, and I have no problems with any other connections outside of SL. I have tried setting my bandwidth rate anywhere between 300 - 600K but no difference. I have turned off almost all graphics settings that provide fancy effects. I almost never see any packet loss in the status bar.

Secondary question: I sometimes wear a custom AO. Would this contribute to the problem? I don't see much difference when I wear it, but who knows.

Try a reset of your router/modem or both if applicable.

Are you using WiFi .. could be radio interferance .. microwave ovens and various other devices use this part of the spectrum .. Use a cable if possible to try to determine if this is the case.

This happens to me a lot. It's especially bad when building because it can happen after making a lot of edits (e.g., moving prims in a linked object, editing a script) without noticing the problem, which only becomes obvious when I try to move, use inventory, or anything else that actually interacts with the world.

This is a bug in SL, most likely a design problem in the protocol. Dropping and reordering of packets is permitted in the internet, and protocols & applications that fail when this happens are the ones at fault -- NOT the network.

I read somewhere that SL is sensitive to packet reordering, and that packet reordering can occur on wireless links. (Frankly, packet reordering can happen anywhere in an IP network, but network equipment vendors anbd service providers work hard to try to avoid this. It's permitted, but reduces efficiency.) However, I haven't seen any difference between wireless and wired.

Note: if you don't see much packet loss, you're probably not getting much packet reordering either, because I suspect that SL doesn't distinguish between loss and reordering.

I sure do wish they'd fix it!

I'm not on wireless, I'm on cabled ethernet. I'm only here responding right now because I just got frozen again and lost the connection. In this case, the map went red so I assume the sim crashed which is a different problem. It seems there isn't any solution. I was inworld for about 2 hours today and had to relog twice after freezing. I too have lost work when building. When you are concentrating, you forget to look at the bandwidth indicator.

Did you check the broadband connection yourself or did they just test the line? I had constant synch problems last week, the line itself was okay but it would kick me out of SL every few minutes because my router had to get a new DSL connection. You should check the router's log.

I get that too and my connection is fine for all other programs and online activity. It is SL and its very annoying.

Ditto! I even notice when SL ia acting crappy that even the forum has problems loading. I am getting really high packet loss and my bandwidth is acting all screwball and yes I am crashing.

defrag

I've been having this same problem for 4 months or so, now. When i freeze, usually when shopping, I can't do a dang thing; can't move, can't turn, can't type in chat or IM windows. Whole game just freezes.
Then, at the bottom of my puter window it shows, "Second Life (Not Responding)".
Also, packet loss and bandwidth are nil. My friends think im ignoring them and this is so very frustrating....
All I can do is relog and many times when I do, SL takes forever and a day to shut down and sometimes, even tho it shows it's shut down, the music from wherever I was in SL keeps playing for like 5 minutes!!!!! Can't log back in til the music stops either!!!!
I am just sick of it and I've filed tickets and checked my internet connection, done all the SL techys say to do but it just keeps on doing it.
And, me too, my friends seem to have no problem with this!
I just dont understand this and it's so damn frustrating!!!!

Please, can ANYONE PLEASE HELP US WITH THIS INFRUIATING PROBLEM??????

I'm at my wits end.... Please help =) and thanks for your help
Ps... I've scanned disk, cleared cache, got no other programs running in background, defragged til I'm blue in the face, and do a disk clean ups and nothing helps! I have plenty of memory and an adequate graphis card too.
What else can i check or do? I too, have my settings all low on SL so as not to create problems in game, all to no avail with this frustrating problem....
Thanks all.... I have posted in the blogs on this before too but no one had an answer that worked so please help ! =) APPRECIATE IT ALL! =)

I was having that trouble with the official release but I'm finding the RC (Release Candidate) viewer a lot better.

Also, I adjusted my bandwidth in the Perferences/Network to about half of my real bandwidth and that may have helped too.

Hope this works for someone..it is very frustrating to freeze over and over again.

I'm not alone. The "SL not responding" is present on the lower tool bar most of the in world time I'm on lately, and am rechecking the rechecked though in hopes it will get better ...

Many Blessings

Been having the same problem for months especially when I go shopping

Same here. I can't even shop anymore. I'll be the only person on the whole Island or Sim and still,I freeze,I sink through the floor,I end up wedged between walls and other strange places. It's crazy and very annoying.Today was the worst.

I'm am not sure if this is related, but I use a Dual Core CPU, when SL stops responding, I open Task Manager and see 2 versions of SL running, when the freezing stops, it returns to one.

I noticed over the weekend we hit 50,000+ users.... wasn't that long ago that 25-30,000 would start to cause latency issues.

With regard to pack reordering, that is an issue, as packets lay dormant in a backedup cache, their timespan life makes them 'die' and the Client has to resend, again now rejoinning the cache.. It's difficult to pin point exactly where that problem lies, with the dynamics of the internet, the holdup can be anywhere between your PC and the recipient (LL network). With a highly interactive platform like SL, a few packets going astray will not cause a major issue, but let that build up and you end up with what resembles a jerky movie from a scratched DVD, the client freezes while it waits to recoup the loss of packets before it can continue. This is very evident when you cross between sims, as all your assets are ported with you to the 'adjoining' sim server. Load yourself up with massive prims, scripts etc when you make the crossing and it becomes worse.

The new clients no longer report User ping times, only server ping and time dialation (the packet reordering from the various servers within LL). I have also noticed many more warnings by the client regarding lost or badly hosted meshes and textures. A good sign to clear the cache, and let the servers refresh the clientside cache.

If you are using XP, open control panel, and open the Firewall icon, click the Exceptions tab and look in there for any programmes you do not recognise, and uncheck them (Leaving your antivirus and secondlife's programmes checked). Turning off 'remote assistance and auto updating programmes' will reduce the sudden reduction in bandwidth. I always set mine to manual update and do it when I am ready.

Believeing your ISP that the 'line is ok' is a bit like trusting your car mechanic. Trust is something that is earnt and deserves constant checks. They are highly unlikely to broadcast their issues to users, they rely on ignornace for the most part. Interleaving and increased contention ratios is something the vast majority of ISP's will not discuss with you. It is how they can suddenly offer you a huge bandwidth increase, but always with the proviso of 'UPTO'.

They do this by taking a bundle of nodes that support 50:1 ratio users, taking an average reading of 50% unused bandwith over a 24 hour period, and interleaving them onto a layered node. Your original 2mb connection is now interlaced with 4 other 2mb connections to give a potential 8mb bandwidth connection, but now your contention ratio has now increased. Of course if you are one of those that use the internet a lot in the small wee hours, you are going to get a good solid connection. ISP's can do this because they no longer state a constant connection speed. This doesnt stop there, every step of the way to the backbone, more interleaving goes on as each ISP tries to outbid the next in the bandwidth wars. More interleaved nodes, more packet cache's.