Second Life Grid Update from FJ Linden

what happen to ibm let them have a try at it,they cant screw it up any wrost the ll did.

Despite all promises SL is getting worse and worse the past few weeks. I am a premium member, but I'm not in favour of restricting access only to premium members. It would be ridiculous to do that, just because LL doesn't know how to handle a growing community. It would be like fighting the symptom, not solving the cause. And besides that: free members are necessary for this world to grow and businesses to flourish.

- LL should find a solution to eliminate bots.
- LL must find some advantage for premium members.
- LL must finally build a SOLID server network. This is crazy!

LL GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!!

You don't need to be a premium account holder to own an island. Restricting logins is not really a good idea, there are people inworld who spend a lot more money than premium account holders.

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wether bot etc have effect

best way is just to remove 1 log in per ip and see

If no effect ok back we go if not then stay blocked

But the argument bots has various parts not all performance fill sim false figures etc and the general concensus appears to be they should go

If dear lindies do listen then throw bread at the masses remove them maybe no make perform better but will make many feel better that worthwhile too

I think the advatange LL will give all premimum members is : "sorry but we have noticed that we have not been charging enough for the premium memberships! So effective in 2 months we will require all premium members to pay 75% more for membership! This will help make things run smoother! Thank you for your understading! lmao

The ones I have seen, the camper bots HAVE to be running fairly active scripts to find a camp chair and if you eject one, they instantly come right back and sit on the chair. I tried a "camper" pole at my club and asked for no AFK dancing etc. I saw this as a way for the girls to make a few $L if the club was slow and within days, the bots were all "standing" on the dance poles over riding the dance animations etc. All 4 poles had bots and I was paying stupid low money (the main income for the dancers was tips) so these things must be all over SL. Obviously I turned off the pay option so the nooblet girls lose out, which hurt retention if there are no "jobs" for people just starting out. My first few months in SL I camped to make ends meet so understand why they do it, bots ruin that part of the SL economy.

As far as "traffic bots", they have to have something in their inventory or they don't exist. If you wear anything in the library(shape/skin etc), it goes into your personal inventory. Plus they have to "listen" are "logged in" etc which maybe isn't a big load but is a wasted load. The other issue is if someone on your sim loads their lot up with traffic bots, then you might not be able to even get on the sim you own land on because this one lot has maxed out the avie count. I just don't buy that these bots have no load on the system. YMMV


Now the land bots are even worse and as someone else said, are HAMMERING the SL servers 24/7. I have no idea why they continue to allow that abuse of system resources. Other than they feel these bots cause people to go over their tier level so LL makes more money? I don't get that at all..

Well yesterday must be something to congratulate LL for: From close to 80K on line they managed to lock out 50k users as the database gave up the ghost.

This was not a freak storm in a teacup. this was SL global catastrophe. One of several recently and by far the biggest so far. Let's watch this space and see if they have just added yet another bandaid or whether they know what they are doing this time. When will they learn and put their house in order first above quoting increasing figures online.

As mentioned above. This was a super advert for all those newbie visitors on Sunday.

It is interesting to note that a paid account, if not paid, gets deleted after 30 days (approx...according to LL) but inactive free accounts are there indefinitely. Me wonders what effect that is having on the database, just so LL can quote bogus figures of how many users it has. Likewise as I said earlier for the bots too. It is laughable to think LL will do anything about bots when it will seriously dent their concurrency figures. Wouldn't surprise me if they don't have an army of them theirselves.

Once I got online I got a couple of reports of grey goo attacks in sandboxes.

There's a couple of SEC fixes that we've found out about in the 1.25 pilot rollout, so possibly the griefers were trying to get their last licks in before the full rollout.

So you try to tell me that todays denial of service for several hours was caused by goo in a couple of sandboxes.......Bit far fetched for a full breakdown....!!

I'm not trying to tell you any such thing.

I'm saying that I got a couple of reports that there were grey goo attacks going on. I didn't observe it... given the difficulties in teleporting I'd have been foolish to even try and confirm something like that.

"A couple of reports" doesn't mean "a couple of attacks". I only hear about what my friends actually see, and I don't know enough people to blanket the whole grid... who does? So take a couple of dozen people, distribute them through several thousand sims, and how widespread could a phenomenon be without *any* of them seeing it. It could be two sims, it could be two hundred sims.

"Reports of attacks in sandboxes" doesn't mean "attacks were limited to sandboxes". It just means the people who happened to notice it happened to be in sandboxes. Any kind of attack is going to be more noticeable in sandboxes, because there's more prims and more space available.

This is also hearsay. Third hand by the time you see it. I could be making it up... you'll have to judge for yourself whether I'm likely to be making something like that up. I'm just passing on an observation that I thought might be relevant.

Why don't you think about not accepting any new accounts until you can handle the 70K traffic?

This is right on target. I was a bit alarmed to hear that LL is working on how to handle 80k online. Can't win by chasing the curve. LL must have an infrastructure plan geared towards 500,000 online, then 1M, then 5M and so on. The groundwork for that has to be put in place now, otherwise there is too much investment in solutions that won't truly scale and ultimately, this legacy will bring it down or forever limit what SL can be.

They're working on isolating the code and the database, check out FJ Linden's more recent blog post (Weekend Grid Outages).

OK so LL have closed off entries to the blog, so theres nowhere else to voice how strongly I feel about this, so I'll do this in the forum. I'm sure this will be ignored by LL but I'm going to vent this anyway.

I have had enough of this. Yet another night of "logins restricted...". I'm sorry FJ but in IMHO things appear to have got worse since you took over and these plans were implemented. As an IT manager I can see the logic behind what you are proposing and the plans you have put in place, they are admirable goals that should ultimately improve the service......however.... the disruption being caused is horrendous. Not only LL's business model is now being threatened by the instability but also the business model of everyone that tries to make a "virtual living" in SL. And some of us rely on that business model to pay for things ourselves in SL, such as land. I plough everything I make back into financing my island. How can I do this when the LL infrastructure is so unstable that people cant spend lindens to buy the things I make?

OK I'd expect disruption from time to time because of the complexity of the system you have created, its going to glitch every now and again. But EVERY NIGHT? Every night for the past week you have restricted logins. Just trolling back through the status page shows night after night of "Logins restricted...sorry folks".

It really just isnt good enough anymore. We PAY a lot into this game , both in premium fees and land fees, tiers, etc. And I agree with others that say that banning just the non-paying members is not the answer. These guys have a bearing on the economy too. Its the BOTS that need to be killed. Or are you happy because they bloat your user numbers?

And while we are on the subject...would an in-world announcement of service disruption kill you? If I shutdown the email server at work without warning, I'd be sumarily sacked! I had to warn people in my group tonight of the issues, that was your job!

You are aware of how Opensim is developing, otherwise you wouldnt be experimenting with intergrid transports. You are, however, in danger of letting Opensims overtake you. People are already experimenting with running their own grids, myself included. Just look at how Second Inventory has become the defacto standard for taking content out of SL for use in Opensims. Its nowhere near as sophisticated as SL, but its getting there.

I am VERY close to giving up on SL and moving permenantly to Opensim.

Ok vent over. Normal service will now be resumed..........

What's the most concurrent users an OpenSim grid has ever had? As many as 1000?

Very true Argent...but the fact remains there is a viable alternative in the wings, and as far as I know Opensim doesnt have a bot problem! If I can help improve Opensim by feeding back into the program I will, because I know the development team will listen. I dont have that feeling with LL. I havent for a while because I feel LL have closed off all the routes for comment (except this one)

I've read FJ's latest post and appreciate both the post, the immense task he has on his hands and the work being carried. I also appreciate the complexity of SL and its infrastructure and the inherent difficulty of debugging it. The fact remains that this past week SL has nose dived, and theres a LOT of frustrated people out there.

Customer service will go a long way to avoiding bad feeling here so ....

In-world announcements PLEASE guys. It doesnt take much to warn people that logins are going to be restricted and that there are issues.

Lose the bots. They make usage figures look good but sap resources that should be used for *Human* customers.

Spank, all but one of the third party grids that I know of don't have have working currency systems and even the one that does have one has a fixed exchange system, they also by and large have no standardized scripting system(s) if any scripting at all, physics issues galore, resident diversity.... and the list goes on and on.'

My point being that there is currently no viable alternative to SL especially until one grid rises above them all to become a true competitior and/or the system is put into place that would make free travel of people as well as goods viable. The protectionist attitude against having someone's property including inventory, outfits, skins, etc... move with them makes that currently impossible.

Well, "in the wings" is a bit optimistic. If SL is an injured ballplayer, OpenSim is a middle-school kid that's showing a lot of promise. And it *is* showing promise, but it's not ready to step into the line-up for a while yet.

Why does voice chat keep going out !!!!!!! i have not had it all damn day !!, I have arthritis, i cant keep having to type !!!! FIX IT, FIX IT FIX IT !!!!!!!!

Thats what I'm saying Argent. Its NOT ready or anywhere near as sophisticated as SL ...yet, but its getting there. But its getting there and faster than I think LL realise

Actually to my knowledge there are 3 with working currency systems Gordon, and 2 more about to launch currency. One is even about to launch voice. (actually I think thats two).

As for travel thats on the horizon to with hypergrid. Its a little flakey now but the concept is clear. I take the point about inventory though and fail to see how that hurdle can be lept.

ok, all the BS aside! Linden Labs is a company with professionals in various areas, just like any other company in the world. They rely on revenue and income, they have salaries to pay out and money to cash in, all with a preferable positive cashflow.

And they are good at it!

What Linden Labs is doing, is the same as RealNetworks did, generate maximum profit for minimum effort with a product that isn't designed to work, but designed to require constant improvement thus forcing users to update and purchase improvements.

Sadly the fact is that end-users are the ones to get hit. For an individual student with an income of 400$USD/month, a 10$/month deduction of that is a big investment for that person, and that is only in order to get support in a game which is supposed to be having an established userbase and friendly community.

Linden Labs aren't stupid, believe it or not. This is pure business; deployment and execution according to marketing strategies. Look around at various websites across the Internet, you won't find much advertisement coming from Second Life, unless it's a posted article somewhere with highlights from an event taking place in the game.

Look at competitors, look at IMVU for instance, go to a website that uses GoogleAdsense and voila, you will see them market themselves. Are they successful in their marketing? Yes. Does it cost the company lots of money to run advertisement campaigns? Yes.

Are Linden Labs interested in running costly advertisement to draw new users to Second Life and expand it's growth? Yes. Do they have the technical capability and knowledge to support more users in Second Life at present time? No! No, and No again!

As any business owner knows, you need to create a genuine interest and a positive reactions in order to outlive, outlast and outsmart (!).

Not upset, outcast and throw out..

Now Linden Labs are still riding the hype of their tao, but at this rate with users kicked out because the backbone of second life, the asset clusters, are failing, it won't be much to ride for much longer. An end-user is the least valuable to a business that aims high-scale for a profitable business, that at management level, and Second Life's Linden Labs no exception. Look for investments where money can be invested, an end-users 9.95$USD/month is nothing compared to an educational grant co-operation or a business symbiosis with a large scale, renowned, company.

- this is why end users have no rights in corporate worlds, nobody (except other end users listen/care) they are simply not important enough to make an impact -

Statistical numbers are showing a 66% growth in Second Life, more hours logged for residents than ever before, and constantly we are capping at 70-72k users, and that is when it breaks. Numbers/day rarely drop below 45k, so undoubtedly the grid is filled with 25k static bots that stand crammed onto parcels/camping stops/model stores to generate traffic. # could that be why so many hours are logged? #

Daily buffer-underruns in the database clusters, failing to pick up assets on demand, complete failure to cache already cached data (loss rates over 22%) and most importantly, transactions failing to support the in-world finances. This is what more or less everyone of the thousands of users in Second Life experiences every single week.

In-world transactions are increasing, turnovers are millions of USD$ higher than expected, still there are no improvements made to ensure the stability of the current setup, focus is on development, not on reliability, and this is why new businesses won't dare to come to Second Life once they have a few weeks experience in-world, and this is why old businesses are pulling out.

Would I take my whole company into Second Life, invest tens of thousands of USD$ to make it steady and worth it's time only to have some random little geekster wanting to play with things out of his/her league sabotage my business strategy and cause serious impact as my day-to-day transactions keep failing? I won't dignify that question with an answer.

!! What is needed is a complete take-down of the grid, a decent reboot of it all, instead of trying to knit-pick and sort out each instance of a database spike, then move on to say that it is an intermittent problem which is shortly resolved, solve the support ticket as fast as possible to show good and quick statistics, then 10 minutes later re-open the issue as it was never resolved in the first place. A P1 (priority 1) ticket should be resolved quickly, but then it should be RESOLVED, not just ticked off quickly to generate better statistics only to have a second one logged moments later.

For once, and for god's sake, think not only about each individual in Second Life, but think about the impact you are causing for established businesses already in Second Life when E V E R Y T H I N G is failing, from inventory storage, to texture cache, to transaction failures and voice issues. Think....think!

Word of mouth is a powerful ally, and that is what Linden Labs have been using to promote and rise them up to where they are, but the irony in having logins closed down, and messages pop up: would you recommend a friend to come to Second Life, leaves very little to imagination if one would, or would not recommend this so called service to others.

In short, you as an end-user means nothing, you as a business only means money, you as a reader of this post is a non-Linden employee because they wouldn't be reading it in the first place.

Happy Second Life, see if you are still here in a years time...

Except without actually requiring customers to purchase anything. You don't need to buy land, be premium, or spend Lindens to have a great time in SL, to build, dress up, script, the only expense is if you can't find a free texture or animation (out of the millions of free textures free for the taking at places like Yadni's) to fit your build... and by the time you need that you've got in-world income from sales if you're any good.

I don't recall Real giving content away for free.

Maybe your analogy isn't quite right?

When I started it was not much more than 10,000 concurrent users when you bent over and kissed your assets goodbye.

Over the past six months SL has been more stable than it's ever been.

And none of the competition, not IMVU, not Lively (RIP), not Sony Home, not Activeworlds, not There (are they still there anyway?), none of them have even attempted even a fraction of what Linden Labs has accomplished. They're on the leading edge, and there's a reason it's often referred to as "the bleeding edge".

Can you let me know which ones so I can avoid them?

Except for the last few weeks, this is very true. Compared to when I joined, things (except the last few weeks) have been waaaaay better.