Second Life Grid Update from FJ Linden

Sounds wonderful... except many of the limiting elements aren't the servers themselves. It is the way they are implemented and the databases supplying them. Changing from VPN to HTTP access is a smart move, providing the security layers are in place, increasing database capacity and pipelines for data is perhaps another. As many have already said on other threads, perhaps changing the database types would be more efficient, although perhaps not a simple task as flicking a switch.

Hopefully, LL have assessed the long term solutions, so after the current upgrades, they don't reach another ceiling at say 100k online. As one of the biggest issues for account retention has to be stability, along with security.

First, friends, please READ my entire explanation, don't assume I'm all for logging off Free Accts just for the heck of it. As I said, IF Linden Lab can't find a way to clean up the BOT traffic, then as a last resort to clear up login space, free accts should get a graceful logout.

While you say you understand how frustrating it can be NOT to receive a service you are paying for, let's look at it from a hypothetical position.

Let's say the govt., of your land decided to make INet Access FREE to everyone through Cable or Phone, whatever it is. Now, the FREE users would be allowed only so much bandwidth, but if they paid XX amount, they would be free of that. The problem is they are still using bandwidth and if enough of them are using at the time a PAYING customer wants to use theirs, then the paying customer suffers, even though that customer is paying their real money for a service. Would you like to be on an INet service where you got your product only when so many FREE users weren't using it?

Perhaps the way around this is to have two seperate servers that deal with the accts as they login. A FREE Acct goes into one server that keeps track of them and all the rest goes into another. The FREE Acct server will allow only XXXXX amount of logins during PEAK times while the other allows unlimited. This way FREE ACCTS get to login all they want to a certain point and the rest get the service they pay for.

I'm spitballing ideas, hoping we, the users of Second Life, can somehow come up with an idea that Linden Lab can implement. So far it seems Linden Lab is having trouble finding a solution, so why not give them a hand?

Now I've put my neck on the line, let's hear your solutions, instead of your criticisms.

Technical point.

The change I think you're referring to is from a number of protocols, including HTTP, over a VPN to the same protocols, still including HTTP, over dedicated leased lines.

Oh? And here I was, thinking that the bots people run that allow them to TP to a parcel within seconds of that parcel being set for sale were actually doing something aside from just sitting there...

Gee, I wonder why? Count on an engineer for a finely-tuned BS detector. Its's a survival skill.

Well, they're taking up an avatar slot and generating totally unnecessary network traffic. That's not "nothing".

Would you like to know what reading mine gets from LL nowdays?

From what I understand of how those systems work, the bots that watch for land going on sale aren't logged in-world directly, they're accessing the land databases more directly through the land store, I think.

Unless LL released some API that I've never heard of, which is certainly possible, for-sale parcel info isn't available thru the Land Store.

AFAIK, land bots are indeed logged in and hitting search/land as fast as they can. Because LL implemented throttles on search/land, the people running these bots have to have a bunch of them logged in at once, if they want to be able to get to choice parcels quickly.

In other words, "all bots are benign" is really not at all true. Some, like traffic bots, are pretty tame and don't really hurt the grid unless the person that coded it is a complete bozo. Others, like land bots, pound the crap outta SL, all day every day.

There are two types of BOT in SL.

Things like LandBots are robots which are scouring the mainland and looking for parcels to buy cheap (usually because of an error in price - a well known glitch puts the price to 1L when you link parcels together.) This Bot consumes server time and lags the hades out of the land subsystem. Personally, I'd have ALL land purchases bring up a POPUP window in YELLOW to the person selling, letting them Confirm or Cancel the sale at the price shown. This would make these bots less attractive and prevent the 1L error at the same time.

Bots as campers are people logging in other characters with special programs. While usually used to attract attention through Map or Traffic, they are also used for legitimate purposes such as portraying band members in The Invisible Band. (Look them up if you like Space Rock) They consume resources in the server and lower the number of people who can be present. But unless you have 30 or more in your sim, they don't swamp the server. A good solution would be to have a check every minute per sim, and when characters have done nothing for more than 15 minutes, when that number exceeds 8, start logging them out until the floor of 8 nonactives is reached again. This would all be serverside and prevent bots from overflowing a sim.

Probably not the place to ask, but what is the point of Bots? And I don't want to hear what they do, I want to know why someone would need them.

Well, Uchi has been working on one to let you buy custom colored avatars including custom textures just by picking colors from a palette. So one reason is... you can use bots to do things that you can't do in LSL.

Landbots exist because they very quickly buy land when the landowner gets caught by the 1L glitch, snatching it up before the landowner can see the error and fix the price. They exist to make the landbot's owner money. It is analagous to checking out all the gas stations in town over and over and waiting until they misprice the gas, then filling a 10,000 gallon tanker before the station owner can do anything about it. They heavily load the sim's server and the land server. They also take up prims on your land, leading to the issue of your buying 1K of land on the mainland and only getting to put out 3 prims because hundreds of landbots have filled the parcel. Why should you pay money to let people you didn't invite use up all your prims?

Campbots are usually launched by business owners to make their clubs or malls appear full. In map, the parcel has lots of green dots and people looking around the map wonder what's going on and check it out. There are also people who use such to create fake bands and "actors" for stage and (ahem) sex clubs. A problem with campbots is that one person with 1K of space can run 50 bots and prevent other landowners on the sim from having any visitors at all, in extreme cases. When done in small numbers they cause no problems. When done in large numbers to make businesses look more full than they really are, apart from dishonest representation, it also prevents others from using their parcels.

Lolwut?

ok....so bots dont have high prim outfits on....granted....but they DO generate lag.
The sheer number of completely useless bots HAS to effect the grid!!!.
If they dont serve a purpose....lets get rid of them.
The grid has always managed fine up until we started hitting 80k online....which I bet a fair percentage are bots.
Also the idle time out can be switched off....which if it helps the grid i say disable this abilty.
We are all suffering for these pointless bots and unused accounts.
I am now paying more money and to be honest seem to be getting kicked off more and more.
I am not placing all the blame on bots or the unused accounts but they are a part of the problem.
And bring back maintanance wednesday!!!!.

Well i am just being silly agian.
But I really dont like the ''money rules'' policy.

We all watched the Titanic, I assume..
Remember that 1st class passengers were allowed to escape first (woman and children).
The 3rd class did not matter at all for the crew.

They were ignored and locked down in the lower decks (logged out..)

I really dont want to see the same to SL.
We're all people, and we all installed SL on our systems.
Therefore I think we have a right to spend time on SL, no matter if your account is free or not. The premium members already have better service, a weekly ammount of pocketmoney etc.

Dont make the gap between Free and Premium bigger, it is really not needed.

------
I completely agree with the bots though.
People that use bots to buy a land that accidently is 1L are just silly.
And people that use bots to increase traffic on their sim are silly as well, they should come up with a more creative way if they want to make their sim a succes.

Maybe its wise run a system scan every hour, through the sims.
And avatars that have not been active during that hour should be logged out automatically.
IS this possible?

People would just write scripts or modify the bots or use keyboard macros to fake activity.

Alright - I've been tempted

I find it amazing that, in a thread where LL stated specifically that concurrency is not the cause of the database problems, some people still automatically blame something else - something that they know nothing about except that it exists. Truly amazing. Anyway...

Those that are placed in range of people add to the lag, but whole groups that are placed well out of range of people cause a miniscule amount of load, unlike a single active real person avatar that causes an appreciable amount of load. When there is enough load, it becomes noticeable as lag.

None of the bots are useless. Yes, they affect the grid in a very small way, but in a miniscule way compared to a single active real person av.

They do serve a purpose - many in fact. Otherwise they wouldn't be logged in at all.

The grid has always had this kind of problem as long as I've been in SL (since Dec. 2006). And I understand that it was no different before then.

It's not idle avs that cause the problem - it's active avs - avs that hit the database.

No we're not. We are all suffering from the database load problems, which are caused by too many active avs.

No. It's the database load that causes the problems, and that's due to active avs.

One thing is true on virtually any platform, whether its SL, Lineage, etc.. Bots are a fact of VR life. They serve one purpose, to gain those that created them, an advantage, the easy way, over the populous.

The vast majority of dancing/camping bots make less money in real terms, than the expenditure of electricity to run the systems they exist on. Simple depreciation of the systems makes this financially unviable.

In my opinion, they are counter productive for most situations. Mall owner sets up 30 camping bots to create traffic figures and green dots on the map. Anyone (a human with human logic) arrives, sees Bots and suffers lag, or doesn't see bots (they are hidden), sees an empty Mall and still suffers lag. Either way, the experience for the intended prize (a shopper), is a bad one.

Land Bots, potential make money, not through any other real means, than an error within the system and the speed of responce that goes beyond human intervention.

While people seem to resort to discrimination about who pays what, the haves and have nots, the true core of the issue is many fold.

The system is throttled to a set business plan (X users per Sq Mtr/Sim) bandwidth throttled, the database systems are overloaded, code error/bad function deployment.
The bandwidth throttling is a standard business plan for any datacenter, along with hosting space.
Database overload is a lack of investment.
Code error/bad function deployment, is down to LL.

Which ever way you look at this problem, it is either a fact of life for SL based on the financial model adopted, or a functionality issue.

I think we've reached the point where FJ and Katt have stopped listening and gone to play with a new shiny thing.

So in a word - laziness.

If malls had a product worth seeing or buying, traffic would fly. But Campbot owners are talentless and lazy, can't be bothered to promote whatever they make, and know that it's quality doesn't stand up for itself, instead relying on people trawling through Search being duped into thinking there must be a good thing at this place with high traffic. If a Campbot owner cares to argue that point, good luck.

As for the landbot use, I think that's the issue that continues to drive people away from the mainland into private sims. To be honest, I don't see who benefits from that course of action. I used to co-run a small zoo on a mainland sim, co-owning about 60% of the sim. Then a girl grabbed a 1500sq m plot, threw down a casino, and I get bombarded with IMs from people asking why they can't access my zoo. Replace the gamblers with bots, and even less people benefit; at least the gamblers had an iota of hope that their prescence there would be rewarded.

If you use Bots in your Second Life, never meet me.

If I would post this, Katt would be all over my behind about being civil

But let me correct you, the Linden's haven't been LISTENING for a LONG LONG TIME, they've heard us, but haven't LISTENED!

QFT

If only SL and RL worked this way, alas they don't. There's a whole heap of difference between producing a product and marketing a product. There are quality creators who engage in tactics that others find tacky, their product is good, but they want to market it to as wide an audience as possible and that's where these sort of issues arise.

There's even a skill in putting the right words not just on your parcel description, but also on the product itself, this has nothing to do with the quality of the item.

Ok....so what purpose does the bot that dances on the pole outside my house serve??
Or the 5-10 bots that used to just stand in a box near my old property serve??
Or the hundreds I have seen just standing around doing nothing?
I know that some do serve a purpose...and to be honest I never said they were ALL pointless.

And Also back when it was only up to 50k a night ....it wasnt no where near as bad as it is now.
I know people who have been members from way back when it was just starting and they too have said the same
I dont pretend to understand all the technical mumbo jumbo....and SOME people on here Obviously do know all the ins and outs of how SL works....my hat of to you geniuses.
But If its that simple.....and .... that Obvious why not fix it?
And lets leave the "useful" bots dancing on there poles and standing in their boxes....hell if thay are not that much of a problem....I may buy myself some and fill my land with them.
I am sure that would not effect the sim at all!!!
In closing ....and this will be the last time I ever have a say on here( mainly cause certain types of people I find just "amazingly" annoying) I dont care anymore cause the bot has gone from outside my house now....hahahahaha.
Peace and love to you all .....and ya bots!!!
=oP