Blazing Internet Speeds?

I'm continuously trying to optimize my XP PC system to tune in SL. As far as I'm concerned my hardware is more than capable.

I've been looking at my internet connection and my speed tests seem to do fine at 6MEG/down 1MEG/up. I watch my connections closely and I don't believe there is any bandshaping going on by my ISP. When I watch my connection to SL, I rarely get above 100KB/s (using NetMeter to monitor). I don't seem to be getting information fast enough from Linden Lab. What is the NORM?

I still wonder if the ISP failure Linden Lab had in early April has anything to do with my present day connection stats. Ever since that April fiasco, I've had nothing but problems.

Any enlightenment on this subject?

I am a newbie but I don't seem to get anywhere near the 1500 kbps that I select. My download speed is a theoretical 3008 kbps, and I usually measure it at about 2500 kbps on speed tests. I get low frame rates and the lag meter says "Possible cause: Image loading". After a while in a region, things get better. Tonight it is horrible.

Is there anywhere where one can see the network performance? Do Premium accounts get better bandwidth that Basic accounts?

I will not upgrade or buy land unless I get good bandwidth.

Well, that WOULD be a good idea. But everyone gets the same, premium or not.

The bandwidth meter in your preferrences is only there to tell SL's servers how much your computer can handle for data sent. It does not mean you will get what you selected as the max. If you are experiencing packet loss the easiest thing to do to help is to lower that bandwidth selection to the point that the packet loss ceases.

I have a 10 mbps download speed with my ISP and consistantly test out at around 8 mbps. My bandwidth when I view the statistics bar is usually around 600 kbps and I have the bandwidth preferrence maxed out. That is just all LL's servers can send to my computer through my ISP and all the routing it takes from San Francisco.

I'm premium.......we get no more data than you do.

Well, I am running Vista, and rebooting helped a lot. Still, it seems that the Second Life Experience could benefit from more bandwidth. After all, I can get full screen, full motion video from Netflix. Perhaps higher bandwidth could be an incentive that Linden Labs offers for premium membership.

yah, last i knew there's something like a one mB limit per user coming from the servers, but is probably in actuality a fair amount lower, 65% or so just from net overhead... then maybe even a max on the client end just in how much your puter can keep up with. usually i only see it really bump up for me if i stream the radio or tv (which is mostly just tacked on top of the sl datastream). at least that's my 'layperson' interpretation of it all...

Outgoing capacity has always been a limitation of SL and barring radical protocol changes will likely continue to be so. Assuming the measurement above of 1 client at 600kbps as a mean, multiply that by 60,000 concurrent agents and you get 36GBps output which is the largest pipe that internet carriers use for their internal interconnections*. Plus, all that data needs to be generated in the first place and sent on its merry way all over the globe.

Indeed, the requirement of OC-768 output speeds (which, to my knowledge are not commercially available) pretty much invalidates the assumption of 600kbps mean and/or 60,000 concurrent clients.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OC-768

Just a little, not very well-known fact: there seems to be an UI bug in the SL client. in preferences/network it says kilobits/second but that number is actually kiloBYTES/second!!!

so, if you have 3000 kilobits per second at home, 300 is the biggest number you should put there... try it out, it helped me reduce lag with no end.

oh i hate when i get my mb's and mB's mixed up!