ISP keeps turning my net off because of SL.

Does anyone know how much bandwidth SL uses. The reason I ask is because my ISP keeps turning my internet off saying that I'm running bit-torrent, Lime Wire or a Server.

I am not running any of these programs, I have two computers both running second life and i dont have any viruses or spywear on my computers ( just re-installed OS on both).

or is there a way i can turn down the uploads, so i dont send out so much data on the network?

not really, with SL everything is streamed so theres a LOT of traffic on your isp

just wondering which isp are you on

Hey Brayden, Do you regularly listen to music or watch video in SL? If so, that would easily cause you to exceed some ISP's bandwidth limitations.

I would bet your downloads are of more concern to them than uploads.

Either way, it's probably time to shop around for a new ISP.

You can turn down the network bandwitdth in Preferences Network and there's in one of the other tabs also one for upload bandwidth.


Nick

MY ISP is a small company I live in a rural area, and am kinda stuck with it, I cant get DSL or Cable yet

If you can't get ADSL or Cable, what are you running on... Dialup?

It must be a world first that a dialup company capped a connection. Do you think you are on a microwave link, or maybe a wireless link? Both of which have low cap off rates and bandwidth. These are not uncommon in rural areas, small companies run a network, using wireless nodes to chain connections beyond reach of the local exchange.

If you are using XP, firstly press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and look in applications tab, see what programmes are running, if there is anything there other than SL (assuming you are logged in), that would be a starting place. Then the Processes Tab, see what programmes are running that associated to your windows login name (system programmes are installed and used by the system, those using your name are programmes you have installed), personally I uncheck, or prevent from running, any programme that only gives me some cryptic *.exe file and no description or link name to an actual programme.

As the SL client is now voice enabled, even if you do not use the voice feature, the client still acts like a peer to peer server through the 3rd party voice servers, in much the same way as skype, teamspeak etc. If you never intend on using it, Click the Firewall Icon in the control panel, click the Exceptions Tab, and uncheck SLVoice.exe. While you are there, uncheck any other programmes that should not have internet access such as remote assistance, file or print sharing (assuming you are not using a network through a router, or one PC as a gateway for other PC's to connect to the internet), Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service is another culprit.

In my experience, even having Limewire on your system at some point, somehow it still uses the system services to maintain some 'unicast' peer to peer status.

Check out your connection (the two monitors flashing in the task bar lower right of your windows desktop) and see if there is any activity with no programmes loaded.

In Control panel, use the Administrative Tools icon, and checkout which services are designated as being set as Automatic, unless you know what you are doing, its potentially unwise to disable any, if you are confident/experienced, disable, or set to manual, any that refer to network polling, administrative reporting, remote assistance etc. Use the System icon in control panel, click the Remote tab and make sure both Remote assistance and Remote Desktop are unchecked.

Hope you get that sorted out.

Depending on where you are SL can suck down a *lot* of data. LOL Altho I don't ever see you being maxed out all the time, here's some math if you had the bandwidth turned up to 1500 under Preferences/Network:

1500 Kilobits/second / 8 bits = 187.5 Kilobytes/second
187.5 * 60 seconds = 10.99 Megabytes/minute
10.99 * 60 minutes = 659.4 Megabytes/hour (that's an entire CD)
659.4 * 5 hours = 3.21 Gigabytes in a five hour period (almost an entire DVD)

Now yer never actually gonna fill that 1500 Kilobits/second all the time but, if you magically did somehow, yer ISP is seeing you download a DVD per day assuming you SL for five hours.

Most of the time you average 100 to 300 Kilobits/second just wandering around. So 300 Kilobits per second still comes out to 675 Megabytes in that same five hour period. =^.^=

Like Nick said, you CAN throttle down the amount of network bandwidth SL uses in the Preferences dialog.

My ISP uses wireless towers which comunicate via microwave line of site antennas going back to his main office. And between my wife and myself we are on line 20 hours or more. I have been working with my ISP to see what he can do for me and in the mean time I will try out your suggestions.

Thank You All

Backing off on the bandwidth will reduce the max bandwidth SL uses, but SL will still want to download all that data and may still exceed your allotment.

Try setting "Preferences -> Graphics -> View distance" to 64 (the lowest setting) and see how you get on. This way, SL will download much less --- UNLESS you're running around a big racetrack or walking along a long circular path, in which case it will send you MORE data as it resends the same scene again and again (trust me, regardless of cache).

So:
- set view distance low
- stay in one place a lot
- spend less time ingame ( )

No doubt there are other ways to reduce the total amount of info SL will send you, and hope to hear about them from others.

The bandwidth function in the Network tab, is not as some portray, some sort of limiter, its is to balance the incoming and outgoing packets to reduce packet loss. In any event, the client will override the bandwidth slider settings as and when required.
If you use a router to connect the 2 PC's to your connection, you can limit the amount of bandwidth shared between both connections in the routers settings. Depending on your particular router, it maybe under the Mac address DCHP section.

Reducing the draw distance to minimum, turn off particles, land terrain to low, Sun and Moon only, flexi sliders to the far left, fog distance to 1.5 or less, dont watch, or listen to any media, don't use voice, will all reduce the amount of data you need to recieve, but it is a dynamic situation, the more you move about, the more data you need to suck down. Set cache to the largest you can afford on your HD (you can set it to larger than the amount declared in the Network tab, by using the debug menu in the Client menu.

If you are using file sharing across your router connection, and you both frequent the same place in SL, try copying the texture folders between both PC's, this may at least save double the download.

Try these bandwidth monitors..
[url="http://www.sharewarejunction.com/info38394.htm
[url="http://lifehacker.com/software/bandwidth/download-of-the-day-freemeter-bandwidth-monitor--windows-244649.php
[url="http://www.paessler.com/prtg/download

Best of luck

If the problem is DAILY bandwidth usage, reducing bandwidth to the computers will not help; it will just make SL take longer to send you the information it's going to send you.

If the problem is your peak bandwidth usage, then that would help. Usually it's the daily limit that's the issue, though.

The following are client-side issues, and I don't believe changes will affect the amount of information SL sends to the client:

particles
terrain
flexi
fog distance

For example, it's possible that turning off particles will cause the server not to send you the information necessary for the client to render the particles, but that's a tiny, tiny amount of information. The whole idea behind particles is to produce complex effects with minimal impact on server load and server-client communication. All the server does is pass the particle parameter values, less information than this paragraph, less than a single 8x8 texture for example. Frankly, I bet the server sends the particle info regardless, so particle settings have no effect on bandwidth usage.

The big ticket items are reducing draw distance and staying put, and after that, avoiding music, video, and voice. After those, the rest are small potatoes.

Whilst you are right in your analogies, you are also wrong in some. The client will not call for information, when sent the trigger package when particles are set higher than 0. Some poofers come under the same genure, and those that don't are ones that spam your client with not just the textures, but the dynamic coordinates as they expand within the VR universe.

Setting the bandwidth to each PC on the system is a crude, but none the less effective way of offering SOME control, provided your bandwidth useage is measured by time spent. More effective is the 'awareness' indicators, for which I posted several links to, that would atleast raise the alarm when the limits became close, or give information to judge usage over time.

With the exception of things like textures, media and bumpmaps, everything else in a VR enviromnent consists of tiny packets of information, mainly coordinates for prim corners (which include the avatars, which are also made from base prims), 'see' enough of them and the stream soon mounts up as you move around (or others move around you).

Terrain consists of bump maps and textures, so do effect interactions between the client and the SL servers with regard to information sent/received.
Flexi, consists of multiple facetted prims, which are dynamic as they flow and move, again a constant source of data unicasted to every user within viewing range.
Fog distance deplicts the 'clarity' in which textures and prims are shown in the distance, lowering the fog, effectively reduces the quality of the textures downloaded. It's an old trick used by VR programmers to speed up the response times in VR environments as it also reduces bump mapping and shiny (vertex shadings etc).

Draw distance I already covered in my previous post.

My short term advise, turn down your settings, and use the restricted bandwidth to each PC and use the bandwidth monitors I gave links to.

Good Luck.

Thanks for the clarifications. However, are you sure that Flexi motion is implemented server side? It would be far more efficient for flexi motion to be implemented client-side, so the only client/server communications difference for flexi is more parameters might sent from server to client per prim.

Also, I find it hard to believe that servers send the locations of individual particles to clients. All it would need to send for the behavior I see is the particle system parameters and the texture, and the target location for targeted particle systems. Little more info than for a single prim. What would be the point of the server sending data for each particle?

For particle systems in moving objects and those that have targets, the server probably needs to keep sending the locations for source and target as they change.

Flexis, like particles and client side rotation (spinning ads via llTargetOmega) are indeed client side. The client just downloads the "rules" (flexi parameters, particle source parameters, etc.) and computes these inside the viewer, which means that they will slightly differ from person to person.

Exactly... in fact everything is ultimately client side, otherwise you wouldn't see anything. My point being, that in order for anything to become initiated, the client is triggered into action by the serverside code, hence any change in a predictable movement, feeds new/updated information (data stream) to your client.