The basics
LL sets up web-hosting! By buying the same servers they now use as simulators, they can turn some of them into machines for virtual hosting (many web-sites on one machine). The advantage is that due to the relatively low processor requirements of a web-server compared with a simulator, you can get a lot of accounts onto one machine without the web-sites suffering.
Normal use
These web-sites would be in all regards just like any other web-hosting out there, a range of account types ranging from small to large-scale with varying disk-space and bandwidth restrictions.
SL use (llHTTPRequest)
The gem here however is using these in conjuction with llHTTPRequest! The bandwidth restrictions noted above would be for outside requests, however, since the machines are hosted on the same network as the simulators requesting information from them using llHTTPRequest, they have a HUGE amount of relatively unrestricted bandwidth between them!
As such, not only would bandwidth use be ignored for local communications, so would the ordinary llHTTPRequest restrictions (ie throttling). In this way these hosting packages are perfectly suited for use in creating vendor networks, multi-sim games and so-on, since the data transfer is almost negligeable; even if the scripts are frequently sending the maximum 4kb of data, it's not that big a deal.
While some restrictions could still be in place (e.g each account having a type of throttle. A basic could have a limit of say...1000 requests per hour, if it exceeds this then llHTTPRequest starts getting delays added to it that grow exponentially till the requests drop back down below your limit. Bigger accounts would have bigger throttle limits, with the highest maybe being completely unlimited).
Tying into accounts
While not necessary, tying this into premium account payments, and maybe even offering a small hosting package as a premium extra (e.g 50mb disk-space, 1gb transfer to the outside world as a rough figure) would make it even more attractive. With all the tools you need being handled in the same place, so you're online ventures are all done by one web-site, why not eh?
Could even go so far as to have a simple tool in SL itself for managing the site, e.g a disk-space and traffic indicator window, simple FTP tool? Or even just having the in-game browser go to a cPanel or ensim window (common web-based tools for managing sites).
The features
Features would be scripting oriented mainly:
- PHP/Ruby-on-Rail/Perl/Python/the kitchen sink
- MySQL database(s) (more for bigger accounts, use file-space allowance?)
- SSL/https (though not really needed for internal communications, good for secure web-sites)
- Web-control panel
- Script tools (e.g quick forum set-up)
Conclusion
Great money-making venture that given the online nature of SL, and the need for fairly quick, inter-object communications with a high degree of control (that web-scripting offers) makes perfect sense to me. And it's not all that hard to set-up a basic web-server, the internal communication part wouldn't even require much, since the llHTTPRequest function simply needs to check if the IP is internal or not, and ignore restrictions (or impose much less strict ones) if it is.
Just so long as the accounts are well priced, I'd be all for a web-host that I would KNOW would offer excellent, high-speed access for my in-world objects!