you can get less lag in seconds, with a few simple clicks?
No, this ain't a scam, but like some infomercials, it's completely risk-free. Y'see, I love "smart" defaults because they help give us a better experience out of the box, whether we're new to Second Life or doing a fresh install. But I keep coming across Resis who, despite having a fat broadband connection, feel "laggy" because they didn't know they could up their Maximum Bandwidth.
GOOD GOSH. SPREAD THE WORD:
One of the not-so-bright defaults, as I griped about with you guys some time ago (the Internet never forgets), is the default Maximum Bandwidth setting. It defaults to 500 kbps, which makes no sense because HELLO WE'RE NOT ON DIAL-UP ANYMORE.
But srsly, like Geordi La Forge said on Reading Rainbow, you don't have to take my word for it. Try it yourself.
Go to Me menu > Preferences.
In PREFERENCES window, click Setup tab.
Move Maximum bandwidth slider all the way to the right... yeah, crank that baby!
(Supposedly years ago, setting your Max. Bandwidth too high would result in bad packet loss and overall decreased performance, but tell me if you still notice that. It may not even be true anymore.)
If you crank the slider up and can't walk but want to, turn it down again.If you want to get rid of grey prims faster and don't mind getting stalled, then leave it high. BUT, if you keep adjusting and experimenting you will get some kind of happy settings you like.
Here is what I use and why. 200 for driving. Why? I dont' care about grey and much and there are very few textures at the low lag tracks I go to! So not so much to stay grey for to long. Plus, I drive with it all grey sometimes and adjust the light. WHy? Faster lap times! I turn of textures downloading, but this is all geeky settings in the advanced and develope menus'...so I will not mention that.
Ok, now if I am shopping and really want to see some stuff I will stand and turn up the network speed to 300+. Why? I dont' need to walk or move so much and I will stand and let it bog down my PC's system bus( an aging single CPU relic with a lower than one gig system bus..um, slow pipes between math stuff and memory is the basic description) so..well, I dont' have one setting and you might also be the same! Then agian, maybe you have three! Like if you share your network through a LAN(9Router or gateway thingy)then you will basically be sort of dealing with people complaining if you have sub 3mb and they want to get a big big file. SO, you might drop it to like 200 kbs (liek I do, but my ISP runs only about 300kbs max!)to allow them more bandwidth to get thier files faster!
But basically, if you experiment you will see what works for you and also know that by lowering it you are asking for less from your ISP's given bandwidth. All the rest sort of makes sense, details on FPS or whatever can be worked out by your own sight and not much geekery is needed unless you really need to get geeky for top performance. My advice then is use Disable Textures in the advanced and develope menu. But once again, this gets to geeky I bet and I bet you have faster than 300kb and dont' race around tracks much in SL lol.
If that didn't help, I am sorry. The technical stuff is not as important really because there are a lot of factors.
Everything takes ages to load and is mostly grey. I'll try to walk and i'll go back, then forward, then back again. Just generally difficult to do things. It's not just SL I have the problem with, it's any online game really.
I did as suggested in the video today and ran a little non scientific test. The results were very rapid loading of objects and textures for about five minutes followed by numerous and frequent crashes and DSN errors. I have not had problems with DSN errors in months, actually I believe over a year and only occasion crashes, normally.. I lowered the slider to half with the same results then dropped it to 100 kb/sec faster then my DSL service, there it stabilized with some increase in loading time without the crashes and DSN errors. (The trial took about 15 minutes.)
On this PC, with this connection, increasing the slider to full is a bad idea.
Time for some Mythbusting: I've heard that setting your bandwidth TOO high can lag other Residents when the server gets too overloaded trying to deliver prims and textures to your machine. I personally leave my bandwidth at 300kbps. My ISP maxes at 600kbps, but I find that I lose my connection to the ISP if I go any higher than that. When I DJ, I have to ramp it down to 50 (which Phoenix allows,) or my ISP punts me.
So is it true you can lag others with bandwidth over 500kbps?
Definitely true you need to look at your end of the connection to determine if ratcheting up that setting will help or hinder. If you're on the cheapest speeds your can buy, you're not likely going to have the digital chutzpah to use 10,000kbps.
Could you tell us more about how your bandwidth settings would effect some one else and cause them lag.
The discussion so far has not been about creating lag with bandwidth, by-the-way.
Streaming music comes through another channel not through the viewer. Perhaps what is happening when you reduce it to 50 kb/sec is your free up resources for the music to flow through your chips/sound card more efficiently creating a trade off of sorts, in effect using less band width by one component to free up more bandwidth for another.
Things have changed greatly since this was first posted. On thing to note is that the bulk of the packets sent and received by your viewer are UDP/IP (no end to end tracking of packets at the OS level) not TCP/IP (end to end packet tracking and retransmission as needed). UDP packets if dropped are usually lost. Other changes Textures and Inventory are now sent via HTTP (which is a TCP/IP protocol) however this causes some issues with some network hardware (routers and cable modems) because of the very high TCP connection churn (connections created and deleted very rapidly). There are several issues about this on both the LL and TPV JIRA. Too high a bandwidth setting can cause very strange and difficult to diagnose problems. The recommended speeds are 500 for Wireless (especially if you have multiple devices talking to your Access point), 1000 for DSL connections and 1500 for hardwired to a cable modem.
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