'Images Time' Server Lag

So, I run a business and I'm there often watching the lag. I have all the debug window (alt-shift-1) up and try to narrow down the question, 'Why is it lagging?' After a few days of watching, every time things start lagging (people moving slow, etc) it is when the 'Images Time' gets high. The sim seems to have it's own framerate, server side, and the Images Time part of the frame seems to be the one taking too long to keep the server FPS up.

Problem is... what causes this? It doesn't seem to correlate well to number of people in the sim. Sometimes we're running fine with upwards of 30 people, and then sometimes we'll have 10 people and will hit a spike for some reason. What on earth is taking up all the server's 'Images Time?'

So, digging around, I find: http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=174

Which tells me: Images Time - The amount of time spent updating and transmitting image data to the agents.

But, I am confused. Why are there terrible spikes? Is someone uploading a bunch of images to SL on my sim (or another sim that runs on the same box as mine?) When people first TP in, I'm not seeing this heavy load of images being transferred cross-sim..

I guess my question is, what the heck is going on, and what measures can I take to improve my own situation? Ideally, a Linden would swoop in and say, 'Oh, of course, Images Time is the time spent doing X, Y, Z, and X happens when you do A, Y happens when you do B, etc...'

I feel so alone in the dark. -a single tear rolls down my cheek-

Does anyone else notice this same thing elsewhere in the world? Does anyone know what it is, or what measures could be taken to improve it?

Bane Darrow

We are having the same thing on Dragon Isle. Along with real long AV rezzing times. Our FPS is runing 55 for me and our normal images time is .1. Its the PEnding Downloads that SPike for no aparent reason.

Would love to hear how many people are having this Images Time/Pending Downloads lag. Better yet, would love to hear from someone who has any ideas what it might actually be or how to avoid it.

Bane

As I understand it, this may be a memory leak in the simulator software, and there is really nothing we can do about it, but LL knows it's a problem and is hunting it down.

Great, I knew someone somewhere must have known about this. Thanks!

Bane

I'm pretty new here but is there a posibility that it's caused buy someone's outfit/attachments using large image sizes? So even when it's the same number of people in a place, the combination of what they're wearing/holding could cause a spike in the images to be downloaded.

Just a guess...

Actually the pending downloads spike is someone TPing into the sim 99% of the time so you are partly right. It is them downloading the sim and thier clothing.