Sim Owners Take Note-- Your Sims Are Sharing Servers

Just put him on ignore or don't respond. derailing a thread is not productive, so with no attention, the track can't be switched.

Someone pushed the Jeska button and no one needs to get banned for this, and if you are anywhere near as frustrated as me it is awfuly tempting to let loose

just let it go

Yeah, I don't really think Jeska was speaking to me directly, but to the general post structure (and especially to a troll post or two earlier back. You know who I mean. )

I agree Mulch. There's just one little thing. Of all the "adversaries" posting here, Dnate is the only one with at least a little honor. The guy never calls people names, never (to my knowlege) actually intends to insult other people, and does speak his true mind rather than just trying to cause trouble. So although I often find it exasperating to read his same pattern of posts in forum after forum ("you haven't presented any data!" seems to be his repetitive claim, in every issue)... I still give him the bit of respect that bit of honor deserves... even though I will slap him between the eyes sometimes when deserved... which really is pretty often.

its why i didnt refer to him as a troll. it is obvious he means well, but in this case (I don't have history with him) he is missing the point of the thread

You are right, and wrong at the same time. Sims do run on the same server. No one is in denial of that fact. I want LL to succeed too. But the lag issue is related. Wayfinder claims he was defrauded based on the fact that his sim is not on its own server. What was told to him by whomever is something only he knows. He is also saying that that is not what he paid for. I disagree with him there. If you are going to go back to the May 2003 press release, then do you want all the bugs and slower machines of the time too? Over two years have gone by, and the entire landscape of SL has changed. It was always stated to me that when I got a island, I would get the lastest and best class of servers that were currently being used. I knew that the lastest class of hardware was a multiCPU machine. They have been that way for quite some time. If you didn't know that, I am sorry to hear that, but you should do a little research before you pay 1k for a sim.

This whole lag issue is really the reason why we are having these posts. Wayfinder claims it is all on the server side, and the content has nothing to do with it. So far the only thing he claims is his sim started to slow down, and never picked up to where it used to be. That at best is inconclusive. He never shows much else in the way of testing. Just this happened. From that, I would not jump to the reasoning that is MUST be all server side. He claims he has graphs and charts, and other data, but now it is lost? I am sorry, I am just not buying it.

I pay LL every month too. So way would I want SL to fail? I pay LL's bills too. LL asked for the data too, he wouldn't give it to them. How is LL going to pinpoint the issue when they don't have the data? If LL is not the business venture for you, then don't stick around and be unhappy. In the end, it is better for all if you are really truely unhappy that you leave. If nothing else, it maybe a wake-up call to LL.

Gratz Dnate, you just got the point of this entire thread. Glad to have you aboard =)

This make sense to me. I do understand what you are saying. You do have to think about others when closing a sim, or getting a new one. I was thinking more that these sims were just for personal use, or a small group. I never knew they were part of something that so many were calling home. My views on getting and keeping the sims have changed, but the other facts remain.

Just as a side note, can LL provide any data showing that sims will not effect eachother? I would very much like to see this, if it is possible. You might not be able to show everything, but maybe a results sheet to see what was tested, what was looked at, and how the conclusions were made? I know Lee said that the engineer had to sign off on it, maybe one of them could post a reply?

Dnate, this post starts to cross the line from "mistaken" and into fraudulent. I guess it's time to bring out the big stick.

Fraud point #1: I have NEVER said "lag" is totally server side and has nothing to do with content. In fact, I have said, IN THIS THREAD, exactly the opposite. I hae agreed that "all content does contribute to lag. It's a given." (I think those were my exact words, in fact. Close enough). My claim is that normal content does not lag sims excessively, but server issues do. So get your facts straight.

Fraud point #2: your continued claim that we have not presented data to LL is pretty much worn out by now. Fact is, you have ignored every scrap of data that has been presented to you on this forum (and in other threads you have visited)... including the mention by several users that the data WAS presented to Linden Lab over a period of several weeks). That data was very conclusive and detailed data-- and they apparently ignored/lost/disposed of it. We do not HAVE to present that data to you. It occurs to me that would be totally futile in your case... because I have to believe that the same bias you have continued to show in these threads would skew your perception of any data we might provide. At this point you're just spewing personal opinions-- and at this point-- those opinions are to me and several others-- without merit or value. Just like a pan rattling in the wind-- it makes noise, but there's no harmony.

Dnate, you know, at this point, I have to admit I'm getting tired of you claiming the same nonsense over and over again despite all facts to the contrary. You seem to be in total denial of facts and you ignore other people posting to tell you that you're ignoring the purpose of the thread and are totally off base. You follow this same pattern in every thread I've seen you post in. You totally oppose the views of others, claim they have presented no data, impune their expertise and have even called other people clueless... and you become more insistant the more posts are placed totally contradicting your claims. It's almost as if you have some inner need to be adversarial and that need increases as people point out how seriously skewed your posts are.

Give it a rest guy... or I will do exactly as Mulch suggested and place your posts on my ignore list. I mean it. Wake up or wipe out. I'm tired of wasting my time on this nonsense. If you don't want to acknowledge the information presented by others, I can arrange to cease acknowledging yours. Your choice. You want to continue in this same silly mode... go ahead. Or you can wake up and start discussing things rationally and stop being so abbrasive/adversarial, and maybe we can have a nice discussion. I'm not going to argue these same points over and over with you any more. Not here.. not elsewhere. So pull your socks up dude.

(end of big stick. hopefully back to normal mode).

You are right, you do say you gave the data to LL, but they seem to be unable to find it, deleted it, whatever. You don't have back-ups of the data, but I think that is your own fault. I personally would have kept the data, just to back up any claims that the company would make of not having the data. LL again asked you for the data, and you can't produce it. That is all I am saying. You may have given it to them before, you may not have. I don't know, and from the looks of it, LL never got them, lost them, deleted them, whatever.

I may have been referancing the "lag monster" post when I said that, so maybe that has changed on your part. Not being able to back up your posts with data is a red flag in my book. Others can take it for what they want. I guess "normal" content also needs to be defined.

Over my time here in SL, I have own land in a number of sims. I don't have the data all nice and neat anywhere but my head, but I have noticed a number of patterns when dealing with laggy sims. I almost always have the debug overlay up. Don't know why, I guess I am just a geek in that way.

I have seen all sorts of lag. I have had it when all of a sudden, I just can move, my ping time shoots through the roof, and then it goes away. Avies seem to be the biggest sim killers I can find. I don't understand this, unless it is just bandwidth over saturation, or maybe just too many requests for data. I have been in sims that lag all the time, this is almost always directly corralated with high run times for scripts. It is really amazing what a few scripts can do to an entire sim. All of this I am sure you know, and have heard a bunch of times.

LL has a bunch of paid engineers to test sims. They have to sign their names saying that one sim won't lag another sim. As a validation engineer, I know you have to be damn sure that something is working before I will sign my name to a result. It is my butt on the line if something is found later to fail that I said would pass. Do you have a repeatable tests that I can run that will show that the server is lagging not because of content, but because of the sister sim hogging more then its fair share? I would like to gather the data myself, but I cannot reproduce the results without the tests.

K dnate, last post today and then I'm out of here. And last time I'm answering your questions, so this will have to do it for you.



At this point... you're doubting my word. That's your choice. Did you read the post here from Forcy in which she very pointedly mentioned that I am speaking officially for our sims? Why don't you ask her if this data was presented to Linden Lab Dnate? I'm sure she'll set you straight. But don't bring this up again Dnate. Like I said, tired of messing with the attitude.




And contining to ignore the data thats presented is more than a red flag in mine Dnate. There are many reasons statistical data may be unavailable. But ignoring data that is presented is... well, everyone knows what that is.

But just for the record, if not being able to back up your posts with data is a red flag in your book... where is YOUR data Dnate? I haven't seen one ounce of data from you backing up YOUR claims. Doesn't that strike you as just a bit one-sided on your part? If you don't think people should post without specific data... then dude... stop posting. 'Cause you got zip.



Or not. Nice puppy. Run off now.



Why don't you have that data Dnate? I don't understand? Didn't you foresee the possibility that you might someday have need for that data? What? You took that data on a regular basis and didn't decide to keep it? Why, I can't imagine anyone doing that! You noticed laggy sims and you didn't pursue the reason behind that lag? You didn't keep the data? Sorry, I don't believe you have that data in your head. I see no evidence of such. (man... this is too much).




Yeah, they are. Have you ever stopped to question why? We have. We have written LL several times in this regard. That's the difference between us Dnate. You get an idea, that's as far as you go. We get an idea... we follow it through to the end.

Here's at least a partial answer: Avatars in Second Life are too advanced for the technology at hand. They are uncontrolled, unrestricted. A person can only have 117 prims on a piece of land, but an avatar can have 1700 strapped to its butt. They can wear un-governed AO devices, sim-killing bling hair, primmed jewelry to the max... and no one at LL does anything about that. (or not that I've ever seen). Truth is, avatar technology needs to be restricted and reduced in scope until LL programming catches up with the potential avatar complexity. We conducted tests on avatars, sent the results to Linden Lab, recommended restrictions on avatar construction... because they are arguably one of the #1 causes of sudden lag on SL. And that's not specifically server nor client side-- it's a mixture of both. But it's primarily Linden Lab, for not restricting avatar design from the beginning to fit within system limits.

Now Dnate... do you see the difference between personal observation and actually tackling a problem? But when LL sees our data, is aware of it, decides "nah" time after time after time.... then why should we do any more work? And why should we have to present anyone with any more "data". And why are you still continuing to ignore the basic theme of this thread-- which is flaws in Linden Lab customer support and communications.



Let's see your data on that statement Dnate. I'm not being facetious here-- I'm making a point. You accuse others of making statements with no data (when in fact we have data and have presented it.. both to LL and on these forums). So I'm coming right back at you... WHERE IS YOUR DATA to validate your claims?



And I'll say here the same thing I've said in the past: Anyone who "trusts" Linden Lab is naive. Linden Lab is a company just like any other company. They have no glowing aura around them nor angelic chorus singing their praises (well, perhaps with the exception of groupies. Go figure). You don't "trust" a company. You observe activities. Trusting a company and even believing what that company says is the same mentality as believing everything you read in a newspaper.

"A fool never reads the newspaper. The bigger fool believes what he reads."



Dnate, make up your own tests. Gather your own data. You have presented yourself here as a highly knowlegeable person who can deny the expertise of others. So you formulate your own systems analysis, design your own testing platforms, do the work, post your results. You've ignored the tests we've taken so far... we're sure not going to waste our time providing you with yet more data to ignore.

And that's it. No more responses to your posts. I think that I and others have sufficiently responded to your posts to call an end to it.

i just want to say thanks to wayfinder and forcythia, who do a crapload for elf clan. and for working so diligently to make sure the sims are working as they should be.

(thought you might want to hear that after all the drama of this thread )

Thanks Anya.

Here's a funny fact people seem to miss quite abit...

In tech speak, the word "server" doesnt always refer to a machine - it can also refer to the piece of software handling the service.

Sims always run on dedicated servers. 'Server', being the software running the Sim software.

Not really sure how people can get confused here, unless they're not technicly oriented.

I am. I am very much doubting your word. I can claim to have and say I sent it, etc, etc. Anyone can say whatever they want. I am not just going to trust someone I don't know, never met, and have no idea if they have a hidden agenda. I am not saying you are doing any of these things, but I think your testing may have been flawed, and that is why your resulting conclusions are wrong. Without the data, or even the the tests that you ran, there is no way to verify your results. I trust LL more then you. Unless you can show me otherwise, I will take their word over yours.



That is my point. You have not given data. Data is raw numbers. It is not conclusions that you have drawn from your tests.



Defining words is very important. If I say something is big. What is big? What is big to me may not be big to you. If we are going to have discussions, we need to be sure we are all talking about the same thing.



I told you I never took down the data. It has just been my observations. I thought I was clear when I said, I don't have the data anywere but in my head.



Flaw within the system design. I agree. Avatars are also much more dynamic then anything else. All the movements and such also take a lot of bandwidth. It does seem that 1.7 helps with this regard too. At least LL is moving forward.




If you would like, come with me to Alta, my home. I can show you that the run times are very high, and the simFPS is very low. Then we can goto Eaton, and a few other sims and see the corralation between simFPS and script run time. If you want it without coming with me, just ask, I will make a nice plot to show what I mean.




And I should just trust you? What is the differance? I trust LL because they have earned it from me. It is my call to trust or not trust anyone, or anything. LL has PROvE their trustworthiness to me, you have not.




I ask for simple things. I don't think anything I asked for was out of line. I don't ignore your test, I just don't see anything supporting your conclusions. There is one post when you say your FPS on the sim just dropped, and that is what started all this. That to me is not enough. I want to know how you get that it is because of more then one processor on the motherboard. The only way I can see that being done is if you can see the bus data and see it colliding. It is almost too bad the 1.7 is coming out and the FPS will be more or less fixed at 45 FPS. I would like to produce some in depth research and data that I would hope get to the bottom of this once and for all.

I don't believe I've experienced this. That could be the case in some circles, dunno, but whenever folks have spoken of server in my experience, it has primarily referred to the actual box which handles the data... or in many cases, the company providing a server service. But the two are almost always used in different contexts (such as, "they're the best server I know" as opposed to "my server is malfunctioning".

I've always referred to the software as "server software" and have perceived it as different both in concept and terminology from the server box. Can't speak for everyone else of course. I wouldn't imagine such terminology being used by LL to refer to software ie, "Your sim will be placed on a dedicated server (software)".

No, that statement's correct. It costs more time and manpower to set up a private island than a mainland estate. Considering one of the major reasons I work in the office is the maintenance of island sims, I'd have to agree that they take more to manage.

Islands have better capabilities through everything in the Estate menu; ban controls, textures, etc., as well as land editing permissions, land renting through groups, etc. Logically, the special features islands provide mean they should cost more than the current $1000 base price of mainland regions.

Read Phillip's comments as a discussion of the private island itself; he wasn't speaking about the hardware.

@Wayfinder: I appreciate your responding graciously to all the replies in this thread, while staying "on message" about your group's key points and concerns, and being their spokesperson.

I find the technology discussion interesting, but more at stake to me is the tone of the exchange between LL and ElfClan, and whether the concerns can be resolved satisfactorily, and through what process.

Your group has invested heavily in SL. I do not think you and they took the decision to bring this to the public forum lightly.

Sorry if I was being misunderstood. When Philip said:
"Philip Linden: we buy faster machines - we get the best hardware we can for about $1000.
Philip Linden: Last year that was P4's.
Philip Linden: Right now it is dual core opterons.
Philip Linden: We buy the best we can get for $1000, so that newer sims can run faster"
He was talking about the mainland sims, correct?

I was trying to show that in that same townhall he also said:
" Philip Linden: Islands will cost $1250, increased from $980 before.
Philip Linden: Same monthly payments of $195.
Philip Linden: This is because they cost us more to set up and manage, and because they have better capabilities and should logically cost more."

If you notice, he says nothing about the hardware costs here. I just always assumed that the new servers for the mainland where also of the same server class as the new islands. Am I wrong about this?

Well, I dunno Wishbringer... In all my years of experience in the networked scene, "servers" have always refered to both software and hardware interchangebly. The dictionary may require you to say "Server Software", but as you are probebly aware - people are not dictionary compatible.

I mean, hell, just a quick search on any popular download site should bring up afew good examples for this sort of (extremly common, by the way) usage of the word.

Just a point to concider.

@CrystalShard: I kinda' have to go with Wayfinder on this one.

From our first conversation to now, the problem is misinterpretation. We do not say that, and we do not present islands as dedicated server purchases. I explicitly did not say that we never said it because I anticipated there would be one post, somewhere, before we introduced multi-CPU servers, where we did. I expected it because I remember the pressure to correct and inform residents that they were not inherently 1:1 dedicated boxes.

This continues to be moot in light of the fact that the class3 hardware provides better performance for each sim with virtually no conflicts. Resident-collected empirical data for one sim is helpful, I'm always glad to have it. It crumbles, however, in the face of 1000+ sim, day after day, peacefully coexisting regardless of content. Out of over a thousand sims, over a thousand sims are not experiencing any problem that can be attributed to another sim operating on the same server. How correct someone is is not determined by noise volume.

But we'll take the initial private island announcement and run with it.

We have one posting regarding "dedicated servers" during class2 days. We actively dropped any mention of dedicated servers, even explained they were not, just before introducing class3 servers. So, anyone who can make this argument, received a class2.

And they still have it. The people who bought Chevrolets still have Chevrolets.


Which is it, Wayfinder? Are class2's dirty old machines, or Corvettes? You change as fits your mood. Either "dedicated server" is the most important value, or "best performing" is. It's not fair to claim import lies with whichever I'm not discussing.

Class2's are dedicated. Class3's are faster and do not experience cross-sim conflicts. At no time did anyone say anything to even insinuate you would have any opportunity to use your own hardware, and we both know it's an unreasonable request even disregarding your lack of evidence.

Your simulator can't use a second processor. You're not getting placed on a dual box alone for no reason other than because you believe there's a problem, when every day we watch thousands of sims prove you wrong.

The choices I present are what *I* can offer. And to state it one more time, I know many, many class2 owners that will take performance over personal pride and will jump at the chance to switch servers with you and benefit from your misconceptions.

I'll always listen. When a resident's knowledge contains new or valuable information, I'll pass it on. But at the end of the day, I'm not toeing some company line, I'm believing the people who have shown me real, concrete, numbers that I can challenge. And no, I'm not going to make the engineers put together something to show you. You have yet to give me any reason to believe that they're lying and what I see on the grid every day is a lie.

I'm not going to spend any more time defending that Linden is right unless you stop telling me we're wrong and present something, anything, that even hints we're wrong besides gut instincts and lost stats I can't see. You have to make a case before I'm expected to defend against it.

You argue about what you heard, I've shown what we said. You complain about what what must happen given knowledge you admit is incomplete, I explain what actually happens given knowledge you don't have. When you're done with this crusade and want to make Second Life better, let me know. That's what I try to do every day.

The sims being brought online each day, both mainland and private island, are the best we have at the time. So both islands and mainland sims coming up today are class4's. So, like I said before, that second snippet means that the added capabilities of islands are entirely SOFTWARE based; i.e. the Estate menu and such.

Wow, ok, that one nearly got me...

I'm referring where Lee just stated he was not going to make the engineers put anything together to show anyone well... anything.

I'm not certain that is a good tact to take, not that anyone asked, but by god, I was on the phone umm, yesterday, speaking with you on buying a sim (and btw, I would like my hard drive question answered, thanks )

Well Sitearm, I do not really like to quote myself, but....

I am sure a VERY many people involved in this thread are passionate about SL, passionate on their point(s) and genuinely have nothing to gain from spreading misinformation.

That said, I'd like to point out one thing I am personally passionate about when it comes to a company answering it's clients questions, that they be answered as completely and thoroughly as is painfully possible, which can be a 'head beating against the wall' experience some days. Not all clients are created equal, not all service providers or their represetatives are either.

Lee, educate us, how where these tests run. You stated a couple of posts ago that you were not going to make the engineers do anything. Now, aside from the obviousness that no one can really make anyone do anything they're not inclined to do in this particular arena (unless you keep your engineers chained to the pipes like I do ), why not provide us with some detail of what exactly was done to ensure that at no time one sim would not effect the other, despite any load placed on it. I think it was pointed out before that this is literally impossible, by definition, if for instance, I do something really dumb and crash my sim, that will have 'some' effect on the performance of the sims associated with it, in whatever fashion they are linked up.

I've said time and time again, 'educate me', I'm hedging bets that I am initially chasing a red herring, however a statement of refusal to provide data (from the service provider to the end client) is not the way I'd decide to handle things (even if you deem that data is being witheld in the reverse).

But, that's what makes things great, we're different and handle and present things differently Now, can I get my 'shared hard drive' question addressed?

Originally the word server would only refer to the software side of things, but over time people have started using it to also mean the hardware that a server is running on.

Some definitions of the word:
Wikipedia
The jargon file