Question about Land Servers

Ok I am quite new I been playin only for about a month maybe month and a half.. I had heard from someone that you can host your own land server from your own server at home..Now I am not sure if this is true or not. I assume it is a mere rumor.. but Is this true? and if it is.. is there a way for me to read more about it?

Nope, sorry, it's not true. There ARE some open-source programs out there that do let you host a sim on your computer (OpenSim) but they're not currently connected with the Second Life grid, so you'd be permanently alone. This could be great if that's what you're into, or would be good for building practice, etc, but you'll never see another avatar on that sim.

Sorry about that.

not entirely true...

the opensimulator based grids can be connected to the sl grid (beta), but it's currently closed for new member additions (you need to be in a special group, in order to use this facility, and is for developers only).

However, as mentioned there is an opensource variant called opensimulator, this piece of software, is very close in development terms to the SL simulator software is able to do. Many grids have emerged using opensimulator, with several hundreds of members joining frequently and do their thing, just like people do on the sl grids.
Is slowly growing, but, interconnection will eventually happen between grids, including assets etc.

so YES it's true you can run your own sims, and yes it's true it can be connected to the sl grid (beta, and not publically usable).
But having your own grid, or hook your sim or grid to another grid, makes it very interresting from development and aternatives to sl point of view.
But for main grid of sl, you are still forced to rent land/sims from LL themselves or via other members (av to av rental).

Couldn’t other people connect to your grid once you told them how?
If so you could give people free land on your grid and start a little community

Yes, the Opensim software allows you to operate in Standalone Mode (this means that you cannot connect it to any other grid, nor can anyone connect their regions to yours), or in Grid Mode, where you can connect to other grids, or allow others to connect their regions to yours, forming a new and expanding grid.

In either mode you can set up accounts for friends and have them come visit you.

However, if you try to use your own PC as a server you will quickly find it is NOT a server, and lag will be a big problem. To get over this most people rent servers or virtual private servers to host their grid if they want frequent visitors, and this costs, so giving out free land is not as easy as you might first have thought.

Rock

My bad. I figure that it's out of the reasonable price range or ability for the vast majority of us.

Opensim is free and is quite easy to install and set up. There are full tutorials for each step, and it only becomes expensive when you want to host it on a server, rather than on your own PC. Basically, if you have a fairly fast PC (over 2.5GHz) with 2GB of RAM or more, and an internet connection with an upload speed (not the download speed) in excess of 500kB/sec, then you should be able to have one or two friends come visit without any noticeable lag.

You can measure your upload and download speeds here: http://www.speedtest.net/

Rock

ahh I see.

Sorry for the really late reply I have been busy..

Anyway.. My main focus on this was to be able to have my own place to build on.. but I would want these items I build to be able to be placed in my characters pocket on the live servers.. if this would be possible with this Open life thing than I would like to get it. If not however than I am not gonna bother with it.

thanks for the info everyone ^.^

there are ways to transfer things from your own opensim to SL but this is not easy and is limited because of differences in the way things are handled, for instance the max size of a building block in sl is 10x10x10 but in opensim software this is 100x100x100.

what about a home network of say 2 or 3 PC's ?

1 PC running the server (and having a Avatar in world also)

And the two other PC's logging into this PC and also having 1 avatar each "in World"

I see.. that would be a problem since I typically make cloths.

OpenSim in standalone mode would probably be very helpful for you if you make clothes. You can test your textures on your own region without paying L$10 each time, then just upload to SL when you are completely happy with them.

For prim builds, there is a piece of software called Second Inventory which allows you to move full perms content and content you create yourself between grids, including SL. I think it costs around US$30.