Sim Slowdown, Speedup, Slowdown, Arggh!

The sim on which I live (Forsaken, I own about half the land there) has always run great, but mysteriously slowed down about two months ago. I asked my Dreamland agent about it and she said it was entirely my fault, due to scripts and physics. I ran around turning things off; nothing changed. (As I'm not the sim owner and Dreamland wouldn't do it for me, I couildn't turn scripts off or pinpoint the worst sources of lag, but I turned off a lot of things that could have been causing lag).

There was no change. Sim FPS and physics FPS were consistenly running around 41, and time dilation ranged from .85 to .91. My little Kitto Flora steam train was getting pretty confused by the low sim performance.

Suddenly, about two weeks ago, FPS went to 44 and 45 and time dilation was consitently .45. All was great, woo hoo.

Then, three days ago, the FPS (both simulator and physics) dropped to about 41 and time dilation dropped to about .91. The train is running okay, but if it gets any worse, it will get confused again.

After my last post in these forums, a friend told me about Max Case's sim neighbors site. During the first showdown, we were sharing a simulator with one other sim. During the fast period, we were sharing a simulator with two other sims. After the second slowdown, we were back to sharing with one sim (and not the same one as before).

I guess Forsaken is being moved from server to server by the Lindens. I'd sure like to know how often this happens, and what can be done to keep my land on a healthy sim so I can fully enjoy what I am paying for.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

First off, you're ALWAYS sharing a server with 3 other sims. Case's site (which I use all the time) will only show sims that have been registered at least once by someone wearing his registrator-tron HUD thingy. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sims not registered there because they're private islands or barren places with scripts disabled, and the owners never registered the sims.

Secondly, you need to pay attention to the time box in sim statistics. You might never have noticed this, but if you click "Time" at the bottom of the statistics bar it actually opens a separate set of stats that reveal where all the lag is coming from.

I've seen a drastic decline in performance on my class 4 sim, despite the fact that I've actually REMOVED a significant number of prims and scripts from it since the lag began. And the sim stats have shown a shocking increase in the Net Time and Images Time numbers. Take a look at the KB article that explains the stats. (The time stats are described too.)

Link ("Statistics Bar Guide" in the knowledge base):
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=4004

Thanks, Wildfire! I never before clicked on the time stats. Can't wait to get home and open them on my sim.

I think some of the older servers still hold two sims, but I can't imagine they will be around much longer. Still, it does seem our sim partners are changing regularly. Fresh ones on Sim Partners are suddenly no longer our partners.