Packet loss

When the grid went down this morning, about 10 minutes before it did i logged into the beta grid voice chat version. I was configuring the chat, and the sim suddenly become full of rezzing ruthes... O.o So i guess everyone headed over there. The sim got so laggy after that in the welcome area, I had to find another sim. however I could not teleport out and got logged out due to the teleport request taking too long. I couldn't log back in so i gave up. Serious packet loss everywhere today hehe.

As LL said the other day (or the othe week), packet loss can vary a lot depending on your location. I've had TERRIBLE packet loss last week but people in US that I talked to had no problems at all. I'm in Europe btw.

But it's really a BIG problem. I have had these issues from time to time but it's gone thru the roof lately

In my mornings it's fairly ok but at my evenings it's packet loss full red almost all the time. So when trying to script as an example it takes like 5-30 secs to save. Or drag something to the object and wait for ever, if ever. Very annoying.

Maybe it's the cable from Europe to California, maybe it's a European provider problem, I don't know. But maybe, in time, LL should consider providing servers in Europe? or do they already? But if the cable sucks it wont help much anyway. I don't know.

Hey LL, it's really a problem over here. If you'd play my SL over here u'd understand. Love this game but this packet loss is killing the fun, honestly, it does.

Yes but they're moving away from it.

Unfortunately, most people think packet loss must mean that something is wrong with the network - something broke or is saturated or whatever. In SL, expecially with the parts that are still UDP, it's just as likely to be that the server code or a disk drive or whatever is losing it as it is to be a network issue. Packet loss is just a symptom that things aren't right - it doesn't tell you anything about what the problem might be.

Well, that sounds all nice. But I am not a network enginer or something like that. I only can say that I have a extreme hard time in SL, so bad even that I reactivated my SWG account again. SL is just not playable for me right now (and with me others as it shows in this thread).

I see a red flashing bar and when I move my mouse over it, it says 5% to 7% packet loss.

In SWG I have not a single problem at all. Nor other Internet programs I use have problems. So (with the risk of saying something stupid) I only can think of it must be in last part on the Internet towards Linden Labs or at Linden Labs it self.... and that is the logic of a none network expert

Morwen.

For so many users all at once reporting high packet loss it must surely vindicate for the most part, things on the clients hardware such as fragmentation or whatever. To a similar degree I assume it also eliminates local providers.
I'm sure for such a high proportion of users with packet loss, it's the stitching coming apart at LL

Yes .

But well... here is the shovel and the bucket. There are the stables. Now to work with you!


Morwen.

<holds nose> .. phwarrr!!

*laughs*
If I would have the prims for it, I would build a stable behind my SL house .

Morwen.

*peeks in Morwens garden and sees the shoveling hobbit*

MUHAHAHAHA!!


Mandy C

I've had major problems with packet loss since Lindens hit around the 25k mark, so much so that I usually just log out in disgust now. Couple of nights ago I had full red bar for most of the 1.5 hours I was in game. It took me the whole of that 1.5 hours to purchase and actually equip a wig! Great waste of 1.5 hours of my life. Yes, you may ask, "why bother?" Well, to tell the truth, it was sheer bloody-mindedness......I was determined to get that wig bought and worn. Needless to say, I haven't bothered to log into game since and I fully intend to sell my bit of land and not renew my 3-monthly subs next time round. I'm sick to death of not being able to TP to where I want to go or wear what I want to wear due to horrendous laaaaaag/packet loss or w/e and there is nothing more frustrating than finally getting into the outfit you want and finally getting to the place you want to be and finding that when you arrive, all your stuff is attached to your crotch and the packet loss etc is so bad you can't rectify immediately........incredibly bad, unprofessional, bad gaming experience.......................Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Yesterday I had no probs at all. Actually everything worked fine. But yea....when that red bar goes up..I usually get stuck.

Mandy C

You folks might want to test your trace route performance, first.
http://secondlife.com/app/help/technical/packetloss.php

I've been experiencing packet loss for some time now. Over several months and it seems to progress. I've been having >1% packet loss within SL. I did a little network investigation...

Using the recommended WinMTR tool by LL, I began a test on a completely empty sim. My results showed that a hop (server/router) in Dallas, TX, one in California, and some VLAN in Houston, TX, could be perhaps my problem. The one in Dallas, TX has tested to 1300/1000 (sent/received) packet loss. It's terrible. I try another sim and it's practically the same hop path so I take it that anywhere I go I will be experiencing the same base result.

I call my ISP (AT&T/Yahoo DSL) and they just tell me that the hop is highly saturated and that I am experiencing degradation in my online experience. They are probably right because I get erratic ping responses from it at times. They've already tested my line for 100% line quality and I've done my own line quality tests showing a-ok results.

What's weird is that DOS ping does not report packet loss directly to the trouble hop where as WinMTR does when it has to hop the route path. What's the technical reason behind this?

My DSLReports Speed Tests show about ~20ms latency to California but I would imagine it's because the transmission hops down a different path because that's not bad latency at all, at least I think.

http://winmtr.sourceforge.net/
http://www.dslreports.com/tools

Additional Note: Trace Route Ping results to the actual sim have shown to be flawless. It's the ones in between I'm having issues with.

A couple/few years ago, it became very in-fashion to make routers treat ping requests as a low-priority thing or to even ignore them. Because of this, it could well be that pings directly to one of the hops between you and the server (what tracert does) shows a higher value or a timeout when ones that go through that hop and on to the next one are fine.

Sindy mentions this earlier in this thread..

The term 'packet loss' just means that the client running on your machine had to resend some piece of information to an SL server. It doesn't say why it had to do this, just that it did. If, just one example, the sim your in happens to be very busy, it might take too long to respond to the client and the client will see this as packet loss. A case like this has nothing to do with the network. Also, this is why LL will tell you to go to an empty sim - doing that eliminates a couple possibilities on what the problem might be.

But performance has become shitty, and this shittiness appears to coincide with the red-lining I and others have noticed on our packet-loss indicators. If it were just ignored pings we're talking about, I wouldn't be accidentally leaving a permanent particle stream on an object just because I right-clicked it accidentally. I wouldn't be stopping dead in the air every 5 meters when flying. My inventory wouldn't take 2 minutes to only partially load, and then stop dead, and (hopefully) my prim hair wouldn't be attached to my butt half the time after a teleport. The world map wouldn't just sit there with the search circle just flashing, but not doing anything. My Linden balance wouldn't just say "L$" when I have quite a lot more than "L$" in my account. Also, teleports wouldn't be so broken that you had to actually log out and then manually enter the name of the sim you want to go to the next time you log on just to go shopping.

Something has clearly changed for the worse- it happened within the last 2 weeks- and many people are experiencing the effects- and only one of those symptoms is increased packet loss reported by the client.

Yep. Absolutely not saying that it isn't shitty for some people. Was just saying that packet loss doesn't necessarily mean network problems. It's more like the check engine light in cars - it doesn't really mean anything aside from 'something doesn't look right.'

I think Sindy's comment was more directed at Peggy..

Somehow I doubt this last part.

I was in a empty sim when I WinMTR'd it. But let me get into the details of what I am trying to do that I am experiencing this...

Building (with prims) is my main issue with SL. What I am experiencing while building is the following...

1. I duplicate an object
2. Transform/Rotate it
3. Transform/Rotate it again
4. The prim would revert to the original transformation in step #2
5. Wait a few seconds...
6. The prim reverts back to the latest transformation in step #3

I call it prim drift for lack of better term. This happens to me so often I have ceased building even in a empty sim. I can build simple things but anything that's like 500+ prims or is just plain complicated it then begins to get pretty bad.

The other issue I have with building is when I work on a complicated object, by luck, and take a copy of the whole object (multiple linked objects), SL only takes about half of the linked objects into my inventory and leaves the others just sitting in the sim with them still selected. Weird.

When I get into an idea and start building something I can build fairly quickly. Building quickly shoots a lot of packets around. I used to be able to build with very little or no issue in prim transformations delaying. Having these issues with SL is really a pain in the you know what trying to build productively.

*takes a deep breath* I'm ok...

tp issues L$ not showing up extreme lag and bandwidth loss only happen to me when lots of people are logged in to SL, it's obvious that the SL servers dont have enough redundancy in them to cater for high traffic loads so when its busy and 35K+ people are logged in the servers cant handle it so we all suffer.

if LL invested more in the SL server network to handle higher traffic we would all have a better second life and hopefully those that leave because of these problems would stay.

SVC-94?

Yea. This sounds like the issue I am having for that particular problem. As Torley said...

Y'all will have to scroll back up to post number 40 if you want to know the whole "quote". The quoted post does not include what the poster quoted.

But since I was singled out by Meade I think I need to follow up a little. I stand by my opinion of LL not being overly professional. The main reason is that they do, as a few have done in this thread. They excuse the problem with comments that follow the logic of "well our network is fine.......it's someone elses problem". In this case it always seems to either the internet or somewhere between the ISP and the client of the users experiencing the problems. And, you know, I can sympathize to a degree with that. But LL is the one developing this platform, service, metaverse, game or whatever it is........they need to fix it. Either that or shut it down and rethink how they are doing it. It ain't working worth a flip for way too many of the users. It's excuses.......professionals don't use excuses. Professionals face up the the challenges and solve the problems.......not beg our patience while they fool around trying to introduce new features to call "advances". If your basic system has problems (no matter where those problems originate) you don't even attempt to move on without solving the basic problem first.

If LL's program has outrun the internet (which some are implying) then they either must fix the internet (not within LL's capablilities...........that I'm positive of) or find a way to fix their program to work within the constraints of the internet that they depend on to deliver their program (call that a product). It boils down to one thing.............it's LL's problem . And they are not professional enough to admit it. And if they won't admit it then it will never be fixed.

And I have to say two more things. I live less than 400 miles from San Francisco and less than 1500 miles from Dallas. Neither of those hops would be considered excessive within the internet. And I'm on a cable ISP with 6mbps speed (tested to prove it). It's not my ISP. It might be the internet...........but only if LL is attempting to do more than that network can do.

My opinions..........and I'm not a network wiz or a computer geek. But I am somewhat of an expert on customer service and professionalism.

Well, it is no funny anymore.... I just logged into SL 10% packet loss!! That means simple you can do only one thing... log off again.

I switched to Star Wars Galaxies.... no problem at all. Not even the slighest sign of lag. I switched to other high graphic games... again, no problem at all.
I downloaded a big file from the US (500mb), no problem in all.

Everything gives me performance one may expect with this 20mb ADSL2 connection... only SL not. So no one can convince me other wise that close to Linden Labds or at Linden Labs they have a huge problem... maybe only in direction of Europe, I don't know. But as I am convinced it is not close around here...

Well, back SWG then again as SL is not playable for me

Morwen.

Just wondering if your ISP is XS4ALL because you are in The Netherlands. If so, there's a huge thread about under 'Technical Issues' headed 'Unable to Move' and a whole bunch of people in the same situation.

We're still waiting on answers..

Again, probably 3rd or 4th time in this thread, the point was that 'packet loss' doesn't necessarity have to do with network related things.

Ok.

Then kindly enlighten us to what packet loss is related to. It's a problem somewhere or we wouldn't be experiencing it. It ain't a good thing or we wouldn't be complaining about it. Who fixes it? The internet? Us residents? Our ISP's? Or the folks providing the service that has it?

My statement still stands. Someone needs to address the problem. That someone is the providers of the service that has it. I love how some will "excuse" problems with no explanations. It sounds to me like LL has a problem and has no clue as to how to fix it. That is probably understandable with what they are attempting to do........but a real professionally run outfit that truly understands customer service would tell us that. Not simply say stuff like "well, packet loss can be caused by so many things. It's not originating in our network so we can't help you.......clear your cache, call your ISP, get more RAM, get a faster CPU, buy a new high end computer". Tell us the truth.........you can't do what you want to do at the present time. Don't point fingers. And don't baffle us with BS to "excuse' the problem.

Maybe you could use your finely tuned, expert and professional CS skillz and find that from, yet again, one of the several other posts in this thread.


Please find me the post where I said otherwise..