Server Allocation Policy

I would urge you to check out the interesting response from Robin Linden on the "HOT LINE" forum in regard to my post about server allocation policy.

But since I'm barred from replying for some reason, although I see others get to do this in threads they started, let me continue the discussion here:



OK, I'm a big proponent of the theory that "lag begins at home". I often get tenants coming to me wailing, saying that their sim is all lagged up, as they stand on the porches of their homes in 500 lbs of hoochie hair and prim-rich stiletto heels, with hearts spewing out of a particle bowl, smoke coming out of the chimney, little twirly flaming things looping around, fountains set to "lagorific" and then not to mention bounce scripts, watchdogs, and assorted other scripts, particles, and lights. I have to say "ahem" and ask them to switch off some of the madness on their own lot, before they get around to wailing about the whole sim.

But we did that already.

We did it twice.

Three times, even, testing, going to alt-1, going to alt-shift-U as thoughtfully provided by Blue Burke, and we're still grinding along at under 1000. The number of scripted objects is less...so, there should be a change, no?

I personally have spent hours working with tenants and owners on three sims getting them to a) understand what causes lag and b) try to control it but then I have to wonder at the end of the day: if this sim is less than 60 days old, why is it at 400-800 even with a normal number of scripted objects?

It's good to know that the Lindens are no longer doing this "switcheroo" thing. But then I get very creeped out on certain sims that were in the 2500 range (when there was no Tringo) and seemingly fantastic, when nothing has changed, nothing added, but 12 hours later it is down to 450 in the middle of the night, as if server-switching does happen in "off peak hours" like 2-5 a.m. EST.

Well, I am left to monitoring the server numbers and appealing to the concierge, I guess, and I invite others to do this also.

Hmmm... apparently Robin Linden spells the "infamous" lagging hair hootchie, while I've seen many others, including Cristiano (the first person to mention this hair type in forums, to my knowledge), spell it hoochie.

Which is the correct format? I await any speculation and enlightenment with fetid... I mean, bated breath.

Isn't server performance a result of _both_ the specs of the server and what is running on the server? A more powerful system should be able to handle a greater number of scripts, objects, and crazy avatars.

I think Prokofy's question (asked in the Linden forum) about specifically ordering an upgrade for a sim server is an excellent one. If someone orders a dedicated web server from a web hosting provider, they generally have the opportunity to pick, and know, all the specifications of their dedicated server (not to mention have at least limited shell access).

At a minimum, I think someone who owns an entire sim, or even a majority of one (or a group of owners amounting to a majority), ought to have an opportunity to pay for upgrades to the server. The cost for this could offset any costs or work hours involved in such upgrades.

Furthermore, some better tools for determining exactly what is impacting server performance seem to be in order. Being able to see what CPU, RAM, etc. a given sim is on would be a nice start. Maybe some kind of "sim accounting" could eventually be available to enable temporarily, that records which users or parcels are responsible for how much CPU/memory load over a period of hours, days, or weeks. (Could a simple version of this be thrown together by LL in order to answer Prokofy's (and his tenants') questions in some actual detail?)

(Just some impressions from a fairly new resident.)

Technically you don't really own the sim... it's still Linden Labs', and you're simply paying them a fee to access it.

PLus, getting upgrades-on-a-whim requests from users, regardless of the cost, probably wouldn't be good in the long run, because you would soon have a huge disparity of hardware on the private sim rack, each with different specs, hardware brands, and so forth. Probably a huge mess technically

LF

"But since I'm barred from replying for some reason, although I see others get to do this in threads they started . . ."

Sorry, only Hedonistic Fitzgeraldian Party Pirates, Feted Inner Uberavatars, and Fatcat Content Tyrants who peddle eeeeeeeeeevil heart-spewing (eww) bowls are allowed to communicate with the Lindens.

*snicker*

/invalid_link.html

Deana Linden has mentioned "hoochie hair" at an undisclosed time. I wonder if the Liasons have an inside joke going around?

While trying to get you a definitive answer, I stumbled across an article which not only had the most amusing name, but the subtitle of the article made me laugh out loud. Behold, Gucci Hoochie:

http://www.kimficera.com/essays/guccihoochie.html

I do believe either spelling is acceptable, though hoochie is the more au courant of the two. I also believe I am responsible for coining the phrase in these forums - I first noted the effect of said hair with Schwanson Schlegel, noticing a private sim of 2000+ fps brought to its single digit knees by some giant hair made of shapes that prims were never meant to be. My favorite French animatrix, Owen Khan called it Zsa Zsa Gabor hair, it was alternatively referred to as Charo hair in my forums. Take your pick. You always ask the hard hitting questions, Beryl!

Yeah, LL basically owns the sim. It would, of course, be their call about whether to provide this service. (To digress, I see the question of who owns what in such virtual worlds, and what one is actually buying with the purchase of virtual land, becoming a very interesting legal and policy question. But I'll leave that for another thread.)

As for disparity between hardware, that could basically be resolved by having a limited number of server upgrade options that are supported. There is already some disparity between hardware between sims. And even though LL has said they are phasing out older servers, unless the entire grid is always upgraded at once, there will always be disparity, or different classes of sim servers in operation.

In the end, LL will do whatever it wants, but it's expressed interest in feedback from SL users. One of its functions is similar to the service a web host provides. How much to keep the SL world as a closed black box, as opposed to providing a set of tools (software, hosting, and support services) that enables more open-ended content creation and a more user-involved world, is something that will have to be decided by LL over time. (I get the impression that at least some of the input for LL's decisions is user preference and what the market is interested in.)

Everybody is barred from replying on the hot line, cept the Lindens of course. If you see a post where someone else DID reply it is because the few few dozen posts were made before Robin made thehot line forum no reply. The fact that you think you were singled out so that you can't reply proves to me you ARE paranoid.

* sigh * Perhaps they hate you. More than likely, it is because they made a change to the forum to not allow replies. Threads that existed prior to that still have replies on them. They also allow everyone else but you to reply, just because they can't bear to see the phrase feted inner core one more fucking time.

!!!!!!!!

Can I offer you a w00t-cicle, Cris?

Duh, I read down into the forum later as it happened and saw that Robin had indeed changed the policy to "post only". I never thought I was single out, because duh, I posted in the first place. I figured it was just some glitch and I explained that was the reason I posted here, duh.

I think Alexis is making some excellent points. I always wonder with these games like The Sims Online or Second Life why they are not more consumer-oriented like, say, a tripod or a Picture Trails. Yes, I see all the feted tekkies sneering, because they think there is something "special" about more-pegs. But more-pegs are just games, just entertainment, just communication devices on common carriers. Let's not get all tingly about them. They should serve the consumer more. They should have gradations of service. Fastness of servers is one of them. If they are paid for, like any other ordinary entertainment or communications system out there, not populated with feted tekkies all agog over the wondrousness of it all.

When I asked if I could have some way to "buy more FPS", Robin seemed stunned, and said something like "well that's a novel idea, never heard of that." But isn't that what many of us want? And why not?

And when I said I'd like to get into a poker game with Phil Linden, and bet all my rental and sales income on a sim against his 12000 FPS in one of his fresh fast sims, sure, she said she'd pass it on and no doubt laughed. But the point is, I can't think of a single other way to get Phil Linden to cut loose some fresh fast FPS without me getting him into a poker game like Texas Hold 'Em with the kind of odds that dealers like Shaun Altman have in their poker parlours. Do you have a better plan? Umm...oh, it involves buying ANOTHER fresh fast sim? But, I already know that "fresh fast sims" are tarnished shopworn goods after 2 weeks, their FPS sometimes knocked down as low as 1000.

Obviously, Lordfly, you wouldn't have to worry about FPS upgrades scattering across the grid like chicken pox because probably less than 10 percent of the players would take advantage of this, it could be tied to tier level.

I really am trying to grapple with the problem of what it means to own a sim and make it available to others and face all these difficulties and annoyances every day, mainly involving lag. First, we need efficient ways to locate lag (alt shift U is OK, but not easily and intuitively used because it shows nothing instantly, you have to creep up on an object--something more graphic and easy to use is needed, and not that script-finder object in world that is very tricky and often doesn't work right). Next, we need ways to troubleshoot and intervene on these things in some standard, public, transparent way.

Currently, somebody hogging all the scripted objects space on a server can hold an entire sim to their hedonistic antics and nobody can do a thing about it, least of all the Lindens. So I am for them paying for their CPU usage or whatever form or unit or payment would be logical. It's resource that is limited and valued and therefore should be paid for.

And if nothing else, we can change the way sims lag by having some kind of notification system and education system that helps people become aware. When you script an object and set it spinning and twirling, you should become aware of the consequences. How? Well, I don't know, maybe some messages comes to you? I don't want to strain the system with more objects generating messages, but if people knew that the sim's lag is caused by THEIR OWN stuff, they might change.

we definitely need ways to track down what's causing lag. not so we can be the lag police and burn the witches but mainly so we can have an idea if our own stuff is to blame. less lag starts at home.

but isn't buying fps upgrades kinda feted and cosseted and mollycoddled?


which is it?

I'm sorry, Prokofy. Furness is lagged because I, Nikolaii Uritsky, have three hundred and ninety-seven bling-scripted, .03m-wide alpha-textured prim curls attached under my skirt.

But I feel NAKED without them!

Anyway, I do hope you figure out what the Hell's going on. It's been causing you a lot of strife lately.. and that's no good.

blinging pubic hair? it's the end of the world.

It's the only kind for groovy hipsters like myself.

I agree with both of these ideas.

I don't think you can "locate lag", because "lag" is a consequence of the hardware not being able to keep up with what its being asked to do. You can't ask, "how much lag is object X creating", but you should be able to ask "what system resources is object X using". Even the fanciest bobbing sparkling listening sensing blinking doodad only creates lag if the SIM or network or your desktop doesn't have the available bandwith or processing time to keep up with it.

When you buy a refrigerator in the US, it has a big yellow sticker on it that says how much energy it uses. Cars have stickers on them that say how much fuel they use per mile driven both in city and highway. We should have that kind of information about objects (especially objects for sale) in SL. How much SIM processor do they use? How much network traffic do they create? How many K of textures do they contain?

I would also like to see a universal "off" state, and "turn on/off" added to the right-click menu on objects. Off means timers, listeners, sensors, particles, spinning, etc. are dormant. Add a way to say, "turn off everything on my land", and a way to limit the length of time objects are allowed to be turned "on" on your land.

CTRL-U only tells you update broadcasts, which are only one lag inducer. It doesn't tell you about timers, sensors, listeners or long-running script methods. We need an easy way to do that too.

Buster

The perfect solution to Hoochie hair is baldness. Bald is beautiful!

Is everyone satisfied with the server upgrades?

Has anyone seen a SIM actually lose CPU power?

Let sleeping posts lie, blaze. If people saw the servers go down, you'd hear about it in like 100 posts

I am wondering if people are seeing that any new sim they are on is always consistently more powerful than it used to be.

This was supposedly the server allocation policy that Linden Labs were targeting.

You know what, Blaze? I think they used the old servers as for void sims to fill in the mainland. Did you get lucky and have any near you?

Couldn't agree more. It's near impossible to identify many of the scripts that are hungry for resources with the current tools. With more tools, it would mean less of the Liaisons time being taken up with residents asking for their help in these identifications.

We tend to use sim resources the same way we do local memory and hard drives. Most users I know run as many programs as their memory will eek through all the time whether they're actually using them or not. Of course that, and the perpetually full hard drive cause them to complain incessently that their computer is "too slow."

When I run down the list of programs they have installed, even just the ones that load automatically, they generally can identify around two-thirds of them. They can usually give me a reasonably intelligent answer for needing, or even wanting, about a fifth.

Point is, LL will never keep up with us because we'll just pack more textures, scripts and avs into a sim as they upgrade the hardware and tweak the settings. Oh and yes, I've noticed a difference in Slate lately. We might've just lucked up in the rotation, but sim610 runs very very well. I haven't noticed a difference in Taber. But we're happy to just not have that infernal memory leak in Taber anymore. Argh and pfft and yaaaaa that was frustrating.