~~*****Say goodbye to your friends in the future~~*****

There is one issue that will need to be addressed, since it seems SL uses a MySQL database system to handle the database, and that is the sheer size of the monster. Likely what LL has done, a la the asset server, is have seperate databases for users, objects, so on so on et all, hosted on different machines. That would make the most sense, but still here's the point:

Big figure of 6 Million users in the user database on the login server:

300,000 users online at one time(using the principal of doubling and still a lean estimate)

Understanding that a database access time slows way down the larger the database actually is, it could take some time to get logged into the system.

Better yet, we all know that we accumilate a lot of junk in our inventories. All of that would likely be saved on the asset server in an OBJECT database pointing to an 'UNREZZED OBJECT' table. These would be inventory objects that don't have keys assigned to them, but have a particular owner field. So say I want to pull my "Magic Cube" from inventory, the client would ask the asset server for it, the asset server would create a new entry in another table, perhaps 'REZZED OBJECTS' with all the same information, except now it has a 'KEY' field that filled in with all that big jargon.

Still with me? Ok, now imagine under severe load, which with 6 Million players worth of objects, how long it would take for the database to reach in and find the one single record for my object. No imagine it when perhaps 100,000 are doing that all at exactly the same time... See the trend here?

In the IT field, I've seen a MySQL database under severe load. It's not pretty. You end up with dropped records, severe slowdowns, or worse database corruption.

I'm sure the Lindens have plans in mind to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but I would like to hear thoughts on it...

so they break the databases down into smaller ones.. I cant imagine it would be hard to have 2 user databases A-M, and N-Z , or 4, A-G, H-M, N-S, and T-Z.. or one for each last name, or for each letter of the alphabet, or... well, you get the idea. I'm positive that a request router could be built into the client that just parses the request for a login, object, etc and forwards it to the right database.

Oh. Good idea.

I'm pretty sure they don't use MySQL.

Also, an SL server has 4 CPUs, and it's one sim to a CPU. With void sims, they have 4 sims a CPU, so that's 16 sims on a void server.

He was bragging about being a member of somethingawful.com. They're so easy to spot; he didn't even need to point it out. This guy, by the way, is now banned in-world. I wonder why?

Granted, not all of the membership at SA are total fuckheads, but it really is one of the bigger breeding grounds for griefers and general all 'round asshats you'll ever find on the net. They're proud of this, in fact, and they love to have their special brand of obnoxious fun, especially if its at the expense of other people's fun. I know this because I have an SA account myself and I do watch the SecondLife threads there; these threads are very active with lots of people joining SL and making great things in-world, but there are also posters who just...all they do is spout how much the SL community "sucks" and how they love to grief us and bragging about what they did and how they're running out of account verification methods.

Well damn, LL, there you go. By killing any verification, you just sent an open invitation to SomethingAwful shitheads (and shitheads in general) to have an unlimited griefparty in SL.

I really hope LL doesn't keep it this way. I'm tired of adding names to my land banlists.

Ah, where would we be without helpful newbies bringing these dire and miserable eventualities to our attention?

Thank you, good newbie. Your prescience has saved us all much heartache, I am certain.

Hrm. I think they do, considering the systems engineer opening at Linden Labs required profiency with MySQL. If not for the fact I live in Washington and can't relocate, I'd apply for it. -.-

Ah! But the cool thing is that you could actually have *many* asset servers running in parallel. Not a lot of updates going on with the *vast* majority of objects, and those are typically handled by the local sim and probably written back once in a while, the majority of asset requests are read-only events, so you don't really even have to worry much about synchronizing data afterwards. You could even split up the assets acrosss multiple servers instead of replicating the entire asset database as is.

OMGGGGGGG that would so rock to have a bunch of servers to surf around in...the lag would be less...give you some place else to go....and hey take your friends with you..I really dont see the big issue here....but guess it gives people something to chat about ...smiles

No, you're the guy IMing me for money out of the blue, and then unleashing with a foul mouth. My guess? Say goodbye to your friends in the near future.

*feels pedantic*

Void sims run four to a CPU. Regular sims run one to a CPU. The newest servers used by LL are 4 CPU boxes so they can run 4 regular sims, 16 low-prim void sims, or some combination such as 1 normal sim and 12 void sims.

*back to the discussion at hand*

The design of SL matches Eve Online closley; a huge backend asset server, and a big pile of grid servers. Unlike Eve SL grids communicate with ajoining grids; in Eve there are a few combat tactics that involve (ab)using the grid design and the visibility issues it causes.

Eve currently runs up to 25,000 player at once. SL could hit that many, the biggest problem would be the asset server and that can be solved a few ways. (Eve recently went to solid-state storage for the asset server and saw a big improvment for performance issues related to DB lookups.)

If we did get an alternate server, I doubt they'd jsut start throwing users left and right into it. They'd probably just start putting new users and probably a select few who choose to go to help them out. THen again LL has been erally weird latly and probably would throw us left and right.

you did read that there are thousands of servers comprising SL already, right?