50,000 concurrent in February ??

Just an observation, LL has almost reached 26,000 concurrent users today( we still might make it) . It was only 16 days ago that the 20,000 mark , was important enough to rate a official notice on the blog.

At that rate of growth we should expect to see 50,000 concurrent users sometime in the 3rd week of Feb. Thats almost 2x the ppl today, Is it even possible to add that kind of bandwidth, login server capacity, at that pace ? The database loads that have seemed to be a major focus internally in LL scare me when I think about doubling the number of queries received very soon.

They obviously have an extremely talented and hard working crew to pull off this whole thing that many of us ( yes you) take for granted, and take every opportunity to complain about. Just think about how recently this would have been impossible with ANY budget or team.

I think that LL has the technical brain trust to do it , what they do now must have looked impossible in the near past. They certainly have the resources to acquire the needed hardgoods and services. I just have this vision of an bucket brigade style group of admins passing along quad processor servers to the guys at the end assembling rack tower after rack tower 24/7.

I think we are all going to suffer... prepare yourself for pain....lots of pain.At this time,
Sorry to sound pesimistic but its my reality at this moment. At morning (in Argentina) sometimes 9K - 12K and at night over 20K. The difference is incredible.
Now, in the moments the grid has more than 20K, you can feel the lag no matter in wich sim you are. With the double of residents online I think we are going to move like at 3-4 FPS and touch in one moment to have the response a few minutes later.
At the middle of february (or a little early) SL will reach over 3.000.000 residents...... expect incredible rush hours...

Wow. Are Lindens going to hire new hamsters?

Hahahaahaha........I don't think that's so obvious at all. That 20,000 mark was reached three or four weeks ago and it was "eureka............we reached a milestone!!" Only problem it wasn't working very well...........and still ain't working well. Even at that milestone mark of 20,000. I do think of just how recently this woud have been impossible!! Obviously that recently is as close as the present time!! They might reach 50,000 concurrent logins in February.........but it will perminently and fatally locked at that number forever. 50,000 frozen avatars standing as statues on a forever frozen virtural wasteland that once was Second Life. A curiousity for the generations to come to visit and see what happens when you exceed the technilogically possible.

Good luck......................LOL.

edited to try to correct some spelling errors........gave up since it's not important anymore since the SL as we know it is near it's end anyway

More hardware, more efficient servers, larger memorychips, faster drives, database optimization and so on. Maybe it will hold. Lets not give up so easily.

Though I wonder that are popular places growing at the same rate as concurrent users? Like if it took 2 years to build some awesome places in SL, then if the users are going to double in couple of months, I think there is going to be more and more people in the same places - which causes lag, full sims, hence bad tp, and so on.

Cool,

Thanks for the idea Peggy. everyone come and buy the hottest new item in SL.
A sandwich board sign that you wear that says " The End is Near" like the nuts in Times Square wear

Q: When the Database load is to much for the servers, why not limit the Unverified Users on the Servers, and log some off? Unverified User dont pay for the game and also dont pay ingame for anything cause most of them onyl take a look and leave.

--SL Resident


A: We've considered the possibility of metering access to Second Life, and it remains a possibility. I hope we won't have to do that, but if it should ever come to that we'll be as fair as we can.
--Robin Linden



Reference post:
/139/a8/160486/1.html#post1384084

I read that in Linden Answers a bit ago.

Translated from PR-ese: "We heard that suggestion before. We considered that suggestion before. We think that suggestion stinks. The course of action agreed upon is to round file this suggestion (but don't admit it to a soul)."

Withthe current state of the game? and all these problems?! and a few more jumps in money chair and dance pad sims inteh coming months.........well NOWAY not until they fix current issues and problems.

It never ceases to amaze me just how clueless many residents are in appreciating the technology they're standing on in SL. And the problems that technology poses.

Yes, there's going to be a LOT of pain as SL grows both in terms of membership and in its interenal code. This is cutting edge stuff, folks -- a whole new world in terms of internet usage. I'm convinced that this is far more than a new "game," it's a new PLATFORM, like WorldWideWeb was a new platform.

Those who are constantly whining and bitching and screaming "FIX THIS" are treating SL as if it's a Microsoft Office product: a single application that is supposed to be bug-proof enough for enterprise use. A more just comparison would be that SL is like the first version of Windows. Does anyone remember how buggy Windows used to be?

But perhaps the fact that people are screaming is a sign of just how deep a chord this "game" has touched. Losing SL, even for an hour, is not the same as being unable to play FreeCell for an hour.

Everyone who gives up in sheer disgust, because their expectations are inappropriate for this particular venture, will be replaced by someone else who does "get" it.

Rather than leave SL in the midst of these "troubles", I've just finished buying more land. I'm in this for the long haul, learning as fast as I can, and surfing the waves as best as I can. Things will get worse, then better, then probably worse again as the platform scales up and up.

I don't know where this ride is going, but I plan on holding on until the end. And I'm well aware that the money I've put into SL may not be pulled out again. That is a risk I am willing to take, so I'm careful not to gamble more than I can afford to lose.

For the people who are running businesses in SL, and who have come to depend on that income, you must remember that this was high risk investment. A single vendor controls both your means of production AND your consumer base, and your vendor is a new company with a new product. Even if this was widgets instead of bytes, that scenario raises a host of red flags for the cautious investor.

But just remember, the payoffs of being on the ground floor of a new technology could be enormous.

Part of me tends to agree, Peggy.

The other part wants to be hopeful that LL is finally seriously considering this.

And, I would be very curious as to how many of the unverifieds would scramble to become verified, if they were to limit their usage.

People who pay Lindens Labs real money for their tier, sims and gaming experience are what is known as 'paying customers'. They have a right to expect the service they pay for to work better than this. I am not sure that calling the paying customers "whiners" is appropriate. Sl seems to fail more each successive weekend.

Hehe, I actually thought the opposite, I was quite surprised to see them say that. Because usually when you suggest something they do not say "We considered the possibility"....maybe they have but I have never seen it. They will usually give an obvious big NO answer.

But like Pal said (Hi Pal!!!) I would think if they DID do this many would indeed become paying and then cry for their right to get in. Others would just leave the game, others would be upset. But indeed i`d bet a good chunk would become paying

...it's too crowded.

The extrapolation of numbers is not supported by the evidence. As was noted above, the more concurrent players, the worse the experience for all. Unless there are some fundamental, systemic changes are made Real Soon Now, SL will reach the point where higher concurrency will start to drive players out due to severe slowdowns. Many builders have already given up out of frustration of database issues.

As it stands, SL is its own limiting factor to greater concurrency.

Good advice Regan............for those who are in the 'game' as an investment. For those of us who are in for intertainment that don't hold much water. And, I'm afraid, there are many more in the game for a game..........not investment.

That term 'cutting edge technology'...........oh I'm getting to hate that thrown out all the time. Yeah, it is some "wow, how do they do that?" stuff.........but when they do that stuff and it interfers with the 'game' and we can't play then it sort of changes to "wow, why do they try to do that stuff when it appears they don't know how?" It's really that simple........if you are offering up some cutting edge stuff then make it cutting edge. Not some borked useless bunch of code on my computer with promises of more and better things ahead. I'm beginning to wonder if anything's ahead........the cutting edge is looking pretty dull at the moment.

Yes cutting edge technology often has problems and patience is necessary for those problems to be resolved. But these problems are all the same thing.....it's related to asset servers or pipelines or routers or network cabling or glitches in software. All the time...........same things over and over and over!! Even a simple minded soul like myself can see they are not making enough headway on any resolutions to even a few problems........let alone the host of problems they have going on at the same time. And my simple mind tells me that the reason is that they are not fixing it..........just putting a big bandaid on to stop the bleeding!! That only works if you actually go back and fix it.............fixed it now (not later, after you push out the next big "feature" upgrade). I'm no programmer or network geek......but I am fairly intelligent and can easily see that it isn't being done correctly.

And not being an investor either I don't know what criteria one might use to actually sink their dollars in such a venture.........but, as it looks at the moment, I wouldn't sink much into SL. I'm not whining............but I hate spending my premimum fee each quarter only to wind up wasting my time waiting on some recurring problem to be "resolved" so I can go get my USD's worth of intertainment! My investment is small...........but I don't toss dollars to the wind (no matter how few that may be). I hear ABC is wanting to buy some sims (perhaps they already have). Wonder how long they will stick around with these problems................cutting edge or not! My guess is not long.

Linden Labs had better get it together soon.......do whatever it takes............to live up to that promise and not continually ask for patience. Big money investors will invest in risky ventures............but they won't sit it out for long without some real improvements! Believe me when I say I hope LL gets it fixed...........but I'm not as confident as you seem to be. But then, all I lose is a game.............and a hit on my credit card going away each 3 months.

Sorry, I thought we were all predicting doom and gloom at 15K concurrent.......

have you seem the state of the game when we reach 20000 online that alone tells you something .

Playin the SIMS was much better anyway....NOT!!! Keep in mind that growing pains is inevitable when your introducing a new product/service and that is exactly what we are experiencing, deal with the hiccups and they will (hopefully) either go away or we will encounter new one's.

Having only been here since September, I heard that at 10,000 It's going to be fine. I believe it can scale. /me is ever the optimist

Let's sum up what it took to get from that amount of concurrent log-ins to where we are now:

1. Baked textures were moved from the asset system to the sim level with months of "missing image" problems as a result and that's still not quite fixed even now
   
2. Return coalescing: most people never heard of it yet it is one of the causes of missing inventory
   
3. Auto-return minimum of 10 minutes
   
4. Classifieds, groups and events searching is severely limited
   
5. Search can be turned off and remain turned off for hours or days on end
   
6. Private sim owners can no longer hide their sim from the map (whether useful or not, it's a feature removed only to help with load)

I'm sure I'm missing a few as well.

Maybe the company that buys LL will put some money into and give us the performance we pay for. Stop griping people...you are scaring Jeff Bezos. He might get second thoughts about buying Second Life.

Linden Labs is not anticipating the growth they are experiencing..........or if they are then they are not reacting fast enough to keep up. If the system can operate reasonable at 10k or 15k and start to bog at 20k it leads me to believe the system code is probably pretty good. Everything seems to start falling apart with numbers.....number of people logged in, number of teleport requests, number of scripts running, number of inventory items being requested, number of lindens being exchanged..............all numbers. That makes me think it's a hardware problem of some kind. So all this tripe about "cutting edge" technology is really an excuse at the moment...........the cutting edge is in the software and the software does it's stuff when then numbers are low. I think Linden Labs has bitten off more than they can chew............expected the hardware to work when pushed past it's design. I'm sure LL's efforts will spur hardware and network engineers and related manufacturers and venders to step up to the challenge. But that is not going to help much with the constant problems experienced with the game by the users (us). Dell and Cisco (only two well known intities that I know are in the business........though I'm sure there are more and even better companies out there) can only react to the problems when they occur and get the works going to really fix it with new and better stuff. That's why LL needs to slow down a little on enrollments of new accounts or find a way to throttle some of the activity until those improvements can be made. But they don't do that..........the keep charging ahead. And I'm afraid it will be to it's demise.

But the lessons learned by others will make it easier and smoother for the next "SL" that comes into realality..............and it will happen. And at the rate of growth that SL has experienced in the last 3 or 4 months, it won't be long either. I would guess someone like Google or Yahoo are already looking into it.

I never got into "The Sims Online".........but aren't a lot of Lindens Labs folks from there? How many of you are TSO runaways? It'll happen........sad, but true.

Well I hope soon.

But yeah thats how people get better, they look at the flaws of one`s good design and build something better.

That`s one bad thing about being the best- someone is bound to pass you.

Point out the company and I give you a cookie

If you have noticed some thing about the IBM in SL its quite now it seems...I wonder why


As for free accounts don`t count on it! Its here to say and LLabs has screamed all over SL about it. Its not going any where like it or not