Coping with low bandwidth broadband

Hi guys,

A friend of mine has a strict limit on her bandwidth useage with her ISP, of 50Gb max, and there is no unlimited bandwidth plan available to her (New Zealand Telecom).

Can anyone reccomend settings etc that would keep her SL experience good, while minimising bandwidth useage. For example, she never listens to music in clubs anymore, as her bandwidth useage used to climb terribly when she did, and she now wears her Ipod and uses that instead when visiting clubs. Any other tips or tricks?

TIA

Rock

Reducing draw distance to the minimum would help. I think I've read that you can even edit a file directly and reduce it down even further than 64m. In the debug menu, there are also some options related to loading textures, but I suspect it'd look like a very grey (and uninteresting) world if textures didn't load.

Using something like AjaxLife for just chatting and keeping in touch with friends, inventory mangement, and so on might be a thing to do as well. Use the main client when you really want the visual experience, and AjaxLife for when it's just the social part that matters.

Move.

I'm assuming that the 50GB is over a monthly period.

Although any limit is a PITA, actually, 50Gb is a high limit (certainly compared with the majority of UK ISP's)

Do you know that the 50GB limit is actually causing a problem, and, if so, is that the problem is down to SL?

I have been monitoring my monthly usage since Oct 2007. I play at least 8 hours a day, draw distance is always set high (except for short visits to the mainland, where I usually have to reduce), particles to 8192 and am considered a 'high usage' user by UK ISP's.

The highest monthly usage I have had was 45GB, and this includes streaming music into SL 24/7 for that monthly period. On average though, the usage is in the 30 - 35GB area.

So, if it were me, before reducing my SL experience (or moving country!), I'd determine how much I am actually using per month and, **if necessary**, cut down on other internet activities, like film and music downloads for example. Only then would I consider reducing my SL settings, and as a last resort

I am on a limited plan living in Australia, and only get 20GB per month.
I use SL everyday, and manage to just scrape through the month. I have been capped a couple of times, and shoved to dial-up speeds until the month was out, however that is because I listened to the streaming music and/or watched streaming media for fair while during that month.

To get through, I have my draw distance set at 64-96 depending on where I am. I have my lighting set to sun and moon only, I have all streaming media/music and Voice turned off.
On adv graphics i think the tab is, I have my meshs turned down lower than halfway, ok so the graphics arent quite as good but you get the idea.

I try not to tp to high textured stores, or areas, and that tends to chew my GB very fast.

I will have a look later when i go inworld, what other settings I have. I was given them by a fellow aussie, who was also having the same issues, as so far it has kept me from going over.

Oh how i wish we didnt have broadband caps here in Aus.. or well.. had affordable unlimited.. who wants to pay $200 a month!!!

Aside from turning off audio and video streams, I have found a couple of things that help a lot. One is to go to Client Menu > Debug Settings, and enter "renderfarclip", then set a number below 64 meters. I use 32 meters. It means not seeing very far, but on the plus side new places load pretty fast. Renderfarclip is the same as draw distance, dont as my why they call it something else in the debug settings. The second thing that helps a lot is simply avoiding crowded places. Every time a new avatar arrives, a spike of data is downloaded to you about them. In a busy place that means the data rates stay in the 100s of kbps, as people constantly arrive. Third is to use as high a cache setting as possible, and stick with places you have visited previously. If an area is stored in your cache, it takes less bandwidth to reload it when you show up (only the list of textures you need to see, rather than the textures themselves).

Yes, doing all these things detracts from the experience of SL, but I have managed to keep my monthly usage to around 12-15GB that way, with a lot of total hours online.

50gig is a fantasy!
i am limited to 17gig/mo and i seem to manage.

Find out if the plan she is on counts both download AND upload. If it does, that can make a huge difference to her usage and what she needs to do to stay within limits.
I am on a 60GB plan here in Australia, and find I am lucky if I use even 50% of that in a month, and that is being logged in 18 hours a day some days, streaming music, having everything up high, and spending most my time in shopping places.
SL uses a lot less data than you would think, unless they do one of those funky upgrades they do occassionally where it literally chews through data.

If she is going over her limits, then she is either with an ISP that counts both up, and download. Or she is downloading a lot of other stuff.

I feel bad for all you Aussies and UK folk when I hear about this. I've also heard rumors that there are plans to change broadband service to allow for affordable unlimited broadband access in Australia at least. I hope that happens fast for you. I sometimes see my aussie friends go poof for a week because they use up their limit.

I am from NZ also and 50 GB should be more than enough.

Maybe she has been using to much youtube or something like that.

Telecom suck anyway, switch ISP's might help.

I use to be with slingshot and you can buy extra 30GB for $25, don;t know about tlecom though.

in 99? i moved from dialup to optus cable. at the time it was unlimited, unthrottled and it was so amazing. i could ping any server in oz at 15ms. i could ping kiwi servers at 40ms and most american servers at 150ms. eventually they introduced a 'capped unlimited' netstats package though and i left a few years later.
then i moved to an internode 30gb plan and i took that for granted. internode rule. the isp was founded by gamers so they know how important your ping time and bandwidth are. in the two years i was with them i never had a complaint.
now i am back on optus but on adsl and it sucks bad. the modem reboots every couple hours, i get lag spikes even on inter-city servers, and i have a 17gb cap and if i go over the cap i am shaped/throttled at like 300 baud for the rest of the month and there is no option to buy more bandwidth!

does nz have an equivalent of whirlpool.net.au?

Always keep an eye on your current download bandwidth as well (thanks to the "clever" UI Lindens the only way to do that now is through View / Statistics Bar which is quite annoying considering how much space it takes up).

If you've been somewhere for a good while (all the textures downloaded, etc) and it's still spiking high, chances are there's a bandwidth draining script somewhere around you (within your draw distance). Turn on Client / Show Updates and look around for anything that generating an unusual amount of updates (a short, small ocassional burst of red/blue is quite alright).

Colour changing dancefloors (not animated textured), those freebie twirly sticks people sometimes wear while dancing, shape/size changing prims, moving prims (but not ones that simply use llTargetOmega for rotating around a fixed point) such as pets, temp rezzers, etc are all things that *can* (but don't necessarily do, it all depends on what they're doing and how often they do it) consume an inordinate amount of bandwidth over time.

Each prim update is about 1Kb, a 10x10 colour changing floor that changes colour once every second would eat up 100Kb every second you're there, or 350Mb/hour which is 6 times more than you'd use up listening to an audio stream.