Dialup Users Lag Others?

I know dialup is not supported and you have to have broadband to be in SL. But, I met a guy today who was on dialup. He knows that broadband is required. But anyway, we were in Penrith, a new sim with just my builds and a neighbors, and I was lagging for no apparent reason. Does his connection effect me in anyway? It was very strange lag and the only thing I could think of was his dialup. Is this scenerio possible?

From a technical standpoint, I have no idea.. but I would say the scenario is possible. I know two people who use dialup, and certain actions they perform seem to have a noticeable effect on the rest of us and what we're doing.

I've seen a seburo fight go very matrix like when a dialup person went into appearance... the bullets literally stopped in mid air, and everything went decidedly gloopy.

As I say, I dunno about the tech side, but at a guess, if it's trying to get some information from their client side and it's only receiving it at a stupidly low rate, are we all suffering until that update, which should of course be near instantaneous, is complete? *shrugs*

I do believe a linden has told me that it indeed can. Said keeping you bandwith set too high for your connection can cause missed packets, ect and lag other users.. Why this is possible I dont know. Seems like bad design to me, shrugs..
Ps.. hmm.. wonder if this is why more users in a sim seems to effect performace so.

Wow good question, I"m curious too.

Maybe SL should put into a place a check that determines if you're connection is too slow or doesn't respond back efficently in set amount of time within 5 minute intervals and log you off.

If this is what is causing the lag.

From what I can tell, it seems that the fundamental design of SL is flawed. It's not just being on dialup or getting extremely high packet loss that can do this, it's evidently also a result of low client framerates.

I don't claim to understand how the server code works, but the networking slowdown resulting from another user's crappy CPU occurs because the SL client's networking and rendering code are on the same thread. It causes high bandwidth to affect framerate, and vice-versa. This is something I'm told is quite high on the Lindens' list of priorities, and that they are, in fact, working on it right now.

The part I'm a little confused about is how that (or indeed, any networking-related issue) could affect other users in that same sim. I don't doubt that it happens, mind you -- I've seen it happen myself -- I just don't get how it could have been designed in such a way. I don't mean that I don't see how the devs could have made such an egregious blunder, rather, I don't see how it could have been done at all. But then, I don't technically know anything about programming at all, so there you go.