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Thoughts on renting sims and the future.

Foolish Frost
Grand Technomancer
Join date: 7 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,433
09-03-2005 16:05
I've been thinking... <watches everyone run screaming into the night> No! Wait! It's ok! The drugs are working now!

<Waits for people to come back, coaxing them in with offers of hot chocolate and dougnuts.> It's ok. Little closer. Here you go!

GOTCHA!

Now, for my discussion on the future value of land in SL.

<Waits for groaning to end.>

Ok. Here we go!


First, there seems to be two main methods of getting land: Buying it outright and paying tier to the lindens, or renting from someone who already does this and playing a bit more to not have to pay for a premium account.

Now, many people have talked about the idea the renting just puts more money in the pockets of the land-barons, but I think the answer is more complex than that.

Truth is, it seems that LL is eventually going to want to distribute the server software out so that companies and individuals can run thier own sims and regions. The client will connect to regions using some form of 'mapping' software.

What does this mean? Well, seems to me the islands they are selling would be a test of how this would work in the future. They are renting servers to see if a market for renting space of a SL server can be profitable.

All well and good. Let's think about it then.

If we equate the sim software to a web server software package, then the idea of renting out space on a server using it makes sense: You have to watch each person on the server to make sure they do not use more than their fair share, etc...

In fact, we will all go to renting land on an island somewhere when this happens.

My question is this though: What will be the bandwidth costs for running such a server, and is their ANY real chance that you could ever make it profitable? For that matter, how does LL pay for the bandwidth being used in SL from it's tier? If a sim is $200 a month, and it's running on a server with basic upkeep, then we are probably seeing the lowest price for a sim that will ever BE seen right now. When this goes public, smaller groups of sims will not be able to charge so little to pay for what the bandwidth costs will be.

Sorry if this was not as articulate as I would have liked, but I'm a bit tired... Slows me down.
blaze Spinnaker
1/2 Serious
Join date: 12 Aug 2004
Posts: 5,898
09-03-2005 16:25
Very good question, Foolish.

I think LL is hoping bandwidth prices come down eventually.

In Korea/Japan I suspect you could probably do it.. however, in the states I'm not sure we're at a price point where it makes sense yet.

LL might be getting some volume discounts, though.

There is also the idea of hosting on intranets, where bandwidth is less of an issue.
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Ash Qin
A fox!
Join date: 16 Feb 2005
Posts: 103
09-03-2005 16:31
From: Foolish Frost

Truth is, it seems that LL is eventually going to want to distribute the server software out so that companies and individuals can run thier own sims and regions. The client will connect to regions using some form of 'mapping' software.


Since this is a 'truth', where is the evidence to support this? I can't seem to find anything related in the announcements or news posts on Lindenlabs's website?
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Do not meddle in the affairs of kitsune, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Foolish Frost
Grand Technomancer
Join date: 7 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,433
09-03-2005 16:43
From: Ash Qin
Since this is a 'truth', where is the evidence to support this? I can't seem to find anything related in the announcements or news posts on Lindenlabs's website?


<grins> Ok. Let me ask you these questions:

- Can the entire internet be run from one company and place?
- Will most business want LL to run thier corp servers for their companies, if this becomes a useful media for meetings?
- Can LL afford the insurance if they have an outage and copr level customers loose billions per day due to it?

I can keep on, but the truth is, they are eventually going to want to allow others to run thier own servers. They simply CAN'T serve everyone.
Burke Prefect
Cafe Owner, Superhero
Join date: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 2,785
09-03-2005 17:02
- Can the entire internet be run from one company and place?

No. A centrally located "critical server" isn't 100% safe. Ideally you would have co-located servers wth redundant connections. Like DirectNIC, they had three OC-3 lines in NOLA and at least one of them is still working. We've had a couple occassions where LL's datacenter went down, distribution and redundant servers would be needed before anything corporate.

- Will most business want LL to run thier corp servers for their companies, if this becomes a useful media for meetings?

Of course! Or else the Corp would need it's OWN monkies! That's way too expensive.

- Can LL afford the insurance if they have an outage and copr level customers loose billions per day due to it?

The Co-Location thing would cut down on that. I'm not too informed on the downtime thing.
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Ash Qin
A fox!
Join date: 16 Feb 2005
Posts: 103
09-03-2005 17:26
From: Foolish Frost
<grins> Ok. Let me ask you these questions:

- Can the entire internet be run from one company and place?

Secondlife isn't the internet, and the way the internet was originally designed was to have a dynamic routing infrastructure originally, so when one route goes down, you can use another. However such a system isn't really used with the internet it self anymore, mainly because companies now own the major networks, and to have failsafe routing switching with various companies, they want you to pay (plus networks like uunet like to garentee their networks don't go down).

From: Foolish Frost

- Will most business want LL to run thier corp servers for their companies, if this becomes a useful media for meetings?

A lot of companies have their servers co-located, except for huge companies like Microsft, Sun Microsystems, Ebay, paypal. Where they actually have a few reasons to host it themselves (big pipe for all internet communications, mission-critical inhouse software development means you should be able to access the servers at anytime from within the company etc).
From: Foolish Frost

- Can LL afford the insurance if they have an outage and copr level customers loose billions per day due to it?

Technically, LL doesn't garentee service reliability, even when you buy a sim, LL also at the same time, has their server co-located, which just reinforces my previous statement.

From: Foolish Frost
I can keep on, but the truth is, they are eventually going to want to allow others to run thier own servers. They simply CAN'T serve everyone.

That's why they don't serve their own =)

However, don't you think additionally the mass updates they do on the grid, which has servers of mostly the same hardware (except differences where the 'generation' of servers are) additionally speeds up mass upgrades too etc?

I know for a fact that Lindenlabs isn't comfortable about having, different hardware in their co-location facilities. I heard from Furnation staff that they offered to send a server to LL for hosting their sim (because of stability issues at the time) and they (FN) had told me, that they (LL) were not willing to because it would create problems with upgrading, and they didn't want to deal with different sorts of hardware for this reason.
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Do not meddle in the affairs of kitsune, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.