Self-Hosted Sims - An Idea (and a vote)

I'll let the dust settle on the current grid attack and then go to the Hotline to Linden and see what I can hammer out with them. Likely there'd be numerous NDAs to sign to cover everything legally.

When you do, don't forget to mention Ghordon Farina. If they (or you) wish to contact me personally, email me at [email]ghordon_farina@yahoo.com[/email]. We'll continue chatting from there.

Until then, vote for the change!

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=806

whoa now, campers. Slow down a little. A T1? We're not going to see that kind of speed until at *least* 1985! By then we'll have robots serving our coffee and flying cars!

I dont think you guys have any idea how much bandwidth hosting a simulator for SL would require. "Business class DSL" and "a T1" would not even begin to cut it.

Really. Most sims appear to burst to 10 or more MBPS when fully occupied, and that isn't even counting child agent traffic. And "lag" is still everyone's major complaint.

Even business class SDSL at best offers 1.5/1.5, as does a T1. There are some, *some* 3kbps up 6kbps down DSL providers out there if you live within pissing distance of the CO.

You can try and do it with Cox or Adelphia's 15mbps/2mbps plans (still FAR short for upstream, far far too little bandwidth) but you'll receive a nice letter from them that said "We didn't mean you could use it ALL, ALL THE TIME!).

Figure at least a DS3. And a lot more than Ubuntu running on a Shuttle under your desk.


And no, "peer to peer" will not solve it.

I didn't say Peer 2 Peer would solve anything.. I said that it might be a similar technology.

And honestly, I DO understand how much bandwidth is required to host something like this. I've hosted numerous servers of various types. I understand that even on a DSL/Cable line, the sim wouldn't be as responsive as an island in SL...

However, this doesn't mean that it's not possible, or even that it's impractical.

Honestly, I think that a personal sim with a few users would probably respond faster than most of the Main Grid's servers, due mainly to the fact that it's only having to serve it's files to a small number of avatars.

Consider the Apache webserver. It hosts images, text files, and scripts, just like SL does. Yet it can handle HUGE loads without ever tiring out.

Now, I understand that the SL server has to also handle placement, movement, physics, and a myriad of other things, but with a broadband connection and a decent computer it shouldn't be unreasonable to set up your own private server.

And the only people who REALLY need to worry about 1000s of people visiting their personal servers will be the big businesses anyways... Small-time sims don't ever get over 100 users at a time usually.

I don't think it that unrealistic.

And even if it is, it's still something I'd like to try, even if only for the fact that I could have my own personal world to escape into when the main grid is down, or when I get sick of griefers, etc.

Running your own server would have plenty of benefits.

(Also... For personal use, there would be practically no lag in running your own server. Seeing as you're hosting the files you are accessing, there should be minimal latency. For external users, it would be laggier, but I doubt it would be as bad as you think.)

Hmm.. also consider the idea that Fiber Optics is now a possibility... I don't remember the exact rate of up/down bandwidth, nor do I remember how much it would cost per month to get it, but I do suspect that it would be adequate to host a single sim.

We already have an ATM fiber terminus at our building. The quote to light it, at 100mbps, came in at $12,000 a month.

That, by the way, is not Linden dollars.

That said, yes, it would be impractical to do it over DSL or cable. Unless you plan to allow, maximum, in your sim, three guys and a dune buggy.

This question has come up before, this -idea- has been on LL's mind for a long time.

At this point in time, bandwidth to the home is not high enough nor affordable enough at the levels needed to do it. It's not a matter of policy, it's a matter of possibility.

With stuff like FIOS, the 'always on, all the time, resellable server bandwidth' issue comes into play again. FIOS is sold to residences assuming they're going to watch sports videos and stream TV, not host an enterprise level application.

As for a server that supports linux...

My 10-year old pentium 2 can run linux as a server.

That's not to say that it could run a SL server, but I'd be willing to bet that I could get a pretty good server for less than $2000.

The sim itself wouldn't cost anything, unless LL decided to charge a minimal amount for connecting to the main grid. Due to the fact that LL wouldn't have to buy a new computer, there wouldn't be a $1000 sim charge. Also, you can get a good internet connection for MUCH less than $500 per month... There are T1 providers offering for around $200 per month where I live.

For personal use, you probably wouldn't need more than a DSL connection.

If you wanted large groups of people to join you in the sim, then a larger bandwidth connection would be needed.

But consider the idea that some of us work for companies that give us free reign over a personal server with T3 connection speed or faster... I know friends that have jobs with webhosting companies that give them their own personal servers running Linux (or whatever they want) with unlimited bandwidth (within the hardware capability, of course) for free. Company benefit. I'm sure there are SOME people out there that play SL that have a good hookup like this.

And for the rest of us, wouldn't it be fun to be able to work on your scripts on the road when you don't have an internet connection?

(Part of this assumes that you're running the SL server and client on the same machine at the same time... Meaning that either they'd port the SL server to Windoze/Mac or else they'd port the SL client to *nix.)

Hmm...

Three guys and a dune buggy could have LOTS of fun...

And I think that we should start working on this idea NOW, even if we don't have the bandwidth yet.

At the rate LL puts out fixes and new versions and improvements, we can probably expect this to be complete around the time that we've got T60 connections for $20 a month (10GB upload / 10GB download)......

^.^

So can an ARM powered by two watch batteries and a compactflash card. That still has -nothing- to do with actually running a SL sim.

Could you get one for under $2000? Sure. But hardware costs are one-time and negligible. Which brings me to:



Ok. that brings us to ~5 people online at one time, best case.



For personal use, you could run it locally.



Well hopefully, those 8 guys will vote for your proposal.

Honestly, I hope someday that this IS possible, and I think LL *plans* for it to be possible, but they haven't even worked the kinks out of *their own* system yet. This is not a "bad idea", it's just way, way ahead of its time.

I'd be happy if it were possible to log in all by my lonesome and use it as a sandbox... of if anybody on my local network could connect.

Truth is, with proper caching and CSP, you don't NEED lots of bandwidth... you could run a sim on a few hundred kilobits of bandwidth if only a small number of people were connected. But rather than proactive, efficient caching, we have something that can't remember the landscape you were looking at 5 seconds ago.

Once the basic landscape is loaded, there's no need for a server to use any more outbound bandwidth than a Quake server... but this won't happen until LL tightens up the caching and net code.

I wouldn't complain. That's the main reason I want it to begin with. The rest could come later.

LL employees already do it at their desks. It's already possible, and built. That, i'm assuming, is a matter of policy. They want this to happen, yes, but I'm sure they aren't too keen on giving away the house just yet. Again, 2.0 will be more of a 1.0 than 1.7 was.

I agree completely. There are TONS of MMOs out there, and the only main difference between SL and WoW (for example) is that you must download the textures for every part of SL and you must download the shapes of everything in SL. Prims and Textures. That's where bandwidth comes in.

But for personal use, I believe that it would be completely possible to run a single-person sim to build on in offline mode, allowing you to transfer the files to the main grid later on.

And that's one of the reasons I wanted to be a LL employee...

But that dream was never quite realized.

I won't argue that the current caching system doesn't seem nonsensical - it does. I don't know what they're caching, because it sure seems to be 'not much'.

I assume that their worry is that having local sims available would detract from buying sims on Agni. And it probably would. I'd wait for them to be "in the black" for a few more years before this sort of thing was actually let out, but I do believe it's their intention, if things last that long.

Philip said something about it in response to a question about servers helping each other out at the SLCC, so I'd guess they are.

Vids are here if snyone wants to see, don't remember what part it is though.

I doubt this method would be strong enough to handle a full blown sim, as LL sees it. Instead it would be possible to have perhaps 1/4th of a Sim in this method. Get with friends who have them as well and put all four together to start the beginning of a small continent. If nothing else it would allow for a good private sandbox type of area.

Bandwidth is the biggest concern. It would take some serious client side caching. Likely it's not just a single in and out connection to LL either. It's likely at least one two TCP connection and one UDP connection. We'd have to come up with some method of packet compression to squish the packets down so they don't need as much bandwidth to function.

Well. I'm going to give up the ghost and "toot my own horn" one last time on this issue.


I am (chronically, the way my time goes) working on a way for people to sandbox offline as more of a Q1 2006 "hack." The intent is to make this available and usable to non-technical folks, but then, I'm not a Linden. As such, my resources and time are extremely limited.


I do have a pretty snapshot that is a tad old, here.



On the issue itself: Yeah. Second Life is a bandwidth hog. The only way this is going to get done is if a competing product is put out there, or if the community as a whole takes baby steps to get there.

Offline building, and content housing, is one of those steps in my opinion. But again, I'm just one person tooting my own tune for a free system that might not work.

Um... don't Active Worlds already offer this kiind of service / feature?

I know a large number of various online worlds that support this feature.

Not one of them is as extensive nor as impressive as Second Life, which is why I'd love to see it implemented here.

Bandwidth being the problem, maybe LL could release an offline sandbox, and allow uploads of scripts/objects/etc.

It's been a few months since there's been any activity on this thread. It's unlikely that LL will ever allow residents to run our own sims and connect them to the grid. There's just too many security/bandwidth issues to contend with. With that said, I feel that we do need the ability to build and script offline and upload our creations to the grid. If we only allow uploading and not downloading, it sidesteps the permissions issue. This will foster more creative content and faster without having to deal with the common problem of griefers and/or lag in the sandbox areas. A personal server where the number of connections is limited to a single concurrent client connection for testing and so forth should do the trick.

Well, I guess my statement that there hasn't been a lot of activity on this proposal is sadly more true than even I'd hoped it would be. It clearly has enough votes where LL should at least give us the benefit of a comment on it. I understand that from a development standpoint they are busy dealing with bug fixes and enhancements related to the grid, but their lack of comment on this is disheartening. I've got a large number of votes tied to this proposal because I think its much needed, but if LL isn't even going to comment on it then is there is point? I'm wondering if the reason they've chosen not to address it is because they want to increase the number of logged in users to validate the money given to them by outside investors? Who knows. I think everyone involved in this realized the hardware requirements to do this will be steep, and if they're concerned about the additional development resources needed to manage it, then I for one would gladly pay an amount of money consistent with cost of purchasing a video game ($50-$60) on say a yearly basis to help offset that cost. Thoughts?

How absolutely wrong. Of course if you wanna have a ton of ppl in your sim at all times it is a problem. However if you're looking primarily just for a place to build, it wouldn't use much at all. We owned and hosted 6 worlds( sims) in another 3D chat, hosted from our home on an ADSL connection, and I hosted one other person's world, along with 3 object paths.

I think Dmitri hits the head on this. No one is looking to be able to host a sim for the purpose of connecting to the grid and allowing ppl to connect to it. All I'm looking for is a way to sandbox build and script allowing maybe 2 or 3 at most avis connect to it for the testing purposes. The only connection into the grid would be to upload our building or scripting creations. I'm still at a loss to understand why the Lindens haven't commented on this.