Continuous Group Chat lag - Are Linden Labs still working to resolve this

[Zeldonix]

I have seen numerous threads now relating to Group chat lag, some of which date back to 2011. From what I can see, there is yet to be an improvement in the fuctionality of Group chat. I am part of many groups in second life and repeatedly get greeted with the following message when trying to post in them-

 "Second Life: The message sent to xxxxx is still being processed.
If the message does not appear in the next few minutes, it may have been dropped by the server."

I am sure I am one of thousands of second life players who is growing tired being unable to use this facility. Can we please have clarification of exactly what is being done to resolve this and when it is going to be resolved?

Kind regards

Zel

[Ayesha Askham]

Zel

I am no coding or programming expert but I do know that this Group IM issue is being worked on at The Lab.  With all the sheninigans about the new virtual world that LL are working on it would be no surprise to see some of the more intractable issues being sidelined so I am not holding my breath for a quick fix.

As I understand it, if any one of a rack of chat-servers lags, the whole rack lags and this means that even small groups, if they share a server or rack with one of SLs large groups and it starts to lag due to multiple messages being processed, will also lag.  I am told that relief servers kick in once in-world numbers exceed about 42K, but I don't know the precise trigger mechanism.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

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Zeldonix wrote:

I have seen numerous threads now relating to Group chat lag, some of which date back to 2011. From what I can see, there is yet to be an improvement in the fuctionality of Group chat. I am part of many groups in second life and repeatedly get greeted with the following message when trying to post in them-

 "Second Life: The message sent to xxxxx is still being processed.

If the message does not appear in the next few minutes, it may have been dropped by the server."

I am sure I am one of thousands of second life players who is growing tired being unable to use this facility. Can we please have clarification of exactly what is being done to resolve this and when it is going to be resolved?

 

Kind regards

Zel

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I understand how you feel about the group chat situation.  However feeling are very subjective.  The LL is able to objectively take measurements regarding group chat.  That is why in July of 2011 they were able to declare group chat problems essentially solved.  At the same time it appears unchanged to those of us unable to objectively measure.

I provide this link to  a 2013 thread which  contains mucho information re the history of LL fixing this.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Failed-group-chat/m-p/2201025#M11969

Of course it's highly unlikely a Linden will provide any update.   I don't share Ayesha's belief that the LL is actively working on the issue.  Although that's just my guess.

[Ayesha Askham]

Qualyphi

I don't often take issue with what, on the surface of it, seems an authoritative response, but I'll make an exception here.

Firstly, subjective or objective, there IS a current issue with group chat servers.  You need only talk with the moderators of a large group such as Firestorm Support English to be informed.  What LL announced as "fixed" in 2011 is most definitely NOT fixed, and sources at LL have admitted as such.

There are programmers working on nearly ALL aspects of server-based functions in SL and group IM is just one of them.

 

[Inara Pey]

The Lab is attempting to address issues of group chat.

I and a number of others were involved in helping with testing some changes being made by Simon Linden to the back-end chat service in the hopes of offering some small-scale improvements in the reliability of group chat connections and message delivery, notably when moving between regions when using group chat. These updates were deployed in May.

Simon believes that this has helped the Lab to better identify where the load is within the group chat service, and he will shortly be embarking on another round of work, which he hopes will yield more obvious improvements.

See: SL projects update 25/1: server, viewer, pathfinding and surprise guest - check the section headed "Group Chat".

The problem with group chat is that it is not a straightforward service with easily identifiable points-of-failure or bottleneck. Like a lot of the back-end services, it is interwined with many other aspects of Second Life and the simulator, all of which require careful examination and teasing apart in order to find out what is going on without unintentionally impacting something else.

 

[Ardy Lay]

When the through-put of a system is increased, what users put through it will also increase.  Repeat until perceived performance improvement persists.  :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

[angelpatty]

You mean that LL will be even LESS responsive than they've been?  How truly good.

[Zeldonix]

one would wonder if they cannot fix the problems with the current platform...how they expect it to run smoothly on the new one?

 

Zel