Curious about inventory.

[Teagan Tobias]

If all my inventory is on the asset server, why does it take 15 minutes (or longer) to download my inventory? And what is downloading that takes THAT long if its not my inventory? (I have a fairly fast connection so that is not it.)

Just curious, what is taking place?

[Perrie Juran]

Is this after clearing Cache or every time you log in?

What viewer are you using?

How large is your inventory?

What is your internet connection?   Are you using wireless?   Download times are affected by bandwidth.

[Echo Hermit]

That's a really good question, and I never thought about the reason why it does take quite a few minutes for an inventory to fully load, especially when you consider you can usually send a photo from inworld to your email address in less than the blink of an eye, and that's amazing when you think about the distance that information is travelling. 

Maybe (maybe) when you clear your cache, and relog, it goes through a similar process to when you defragment your computer - giving you a tidier version of all your belongings (just a guess).

Someone will (hopefully) come along with the right answer.

Meantime, I'm going to Google, because someone told me 'Google ist your friend' :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Teagan Tobias]

Is this after clearing Cache or every time you log in?

That long only with a clean install or after cache clear.

What viewer are you using?

I use Nirans mostly, I try to keep LLV3 updated to see how it is coming along.

How large is your inventory?

Almost 35000.

What is your internet connection?

Cable.

Are you using wireless?

No.

Download times are affected by bandwidth.

When I download software/data I normally get close to or above 1 MB/sec.

But I think my question is more, if my inventory is on the asset server, what is downloading?

[Czari Zenovka]

I don't know if this has any bearing on the issue, but I heard it advised in a class on inventory management and have been doing this ever since:

Each time I log into SL, the first thing I do is force the inventory to load by typing an A in the blank search box.  My inventory promptly loads, displaying the item total.  It is the same thing that is recommended to do when one has inventory missing (clear cache, go to a low-lag sim, force inventory load), but I do this each and every time I log into SL (not clearing cache...I just do that periodically) and my inventory loads in seconds.

I do keep a relatively low inventory count by archiving items I don't use regularly in storage boxes, have textures in organizers, etc. so that may also help.

Just a thought of something to try. 

[Teagan Tobias]

Each time I log into SL, the first thing I do is force the inventory to load by typing an A in the blank search box.

I do about the same thing, but I use the Recent button. And that is quick, no problem there. I also use storage boxes, have a folder of them and a note card telling what is in each one. I also try to do a house cleaning from time to time. I recently deleted close to 4000 items from my inventory, but that is hard to do.

[Perrie Juran]

I tried googling to find out exactly what is in our cache but couldn't turn up an answer.

We do know that by it's nature, the viewer only downloads at a speed that may be much lower than our connections.  I believe if I recall correctly, it caps at about 1500mbps.  My (educated) guess this is to keep server load from going through the roof.  This probably slows the whole process down a lot.

It's been a long time since I had it happen, but I remember years ago when trying to download programs getting the message the server was "full" and to try again later.  A similar situation perhaps?

[Teagan Tobias]

No full message, just slow download.  I will at the same time be getting a FPS of 80 to 100.  That tells me my connection is OK.

[Ceka Cianci]

your connection will onyl matter if it is slower than the servers..

i would thnk also depending on the day or how busy the asset server is will depend on how long it takes..

 

some days i can get mine really fast..where some days it can take 40 minutes...

 

also sending a pic to say an email may be that it is sending it from the cache information maybe?rather than the asset server..

that's just a guess  really hehehe

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Teagan Tobias wrote: I also use storage boxes, have a folder of them and a note card telling what is in each one. I also try to do a house cleaning from time to time. I recently deleted close to 4000 items from my inventory, but that is hard to do.

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I keep my inventory under 8,000 and I'm a content creator so that adds some extra inventory.  It can be challenging to keep a low inventory but I'm a stickler about it.  With a good storage system and a few creative ideas it's amazing how compact an inventory can become.

ETA: I have an old PC, as in it will not run the SL v3/Firestorm, etc. viewers.  Just throwing that in for the speed discussion.  I am on broadband cable.

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I may be wrong but I doubt your inventory is stored all together in a neat little package on the asset server, so it takes a bit to locate it all.  The items are probably stored under the UUID number. with a table of some sort that lists all the UUID numbers of items that fall under your user name.

If you log into a quiet sim, one with no land or objects like those in the blake sea,  your inventory will load much faster. 

So really it is the demand being made by you and others on the asset server since it has to find and send the items to you, and the sim server.

[Cerise1488303085]

Here is the big picture. Yes it's tl;dr. It was almost tl;dw too.

Assets and inventory are separate systems, even though we need both of them working to use our stuff.

Asset storage is basically a gigantic file server, and the UUID serves as a file name of sorts. When the sim pokes the asset system with a UUID, it receives a pointer to the matching file. And that's about all the asset system really does. It's a straightforward task, but the amount of stuff to fetch and store 24/7 is mind boggling.

Avatar inventory is stored in a pile of databases. Each database serves a fraction of the users, that's why those "unscheduled maintenance" things often stop some people from logging in, but not others.

When your viewer requests inventory, middleware sends a query to "your" inventory database, and then returns a formatted version of this huge list of rows for each of your inventory folders and the items themselves. Each entry carries a lot of information: owner, item name and description, creator, access dates, permissions flags, the folder it belongs in, what kind of asset it is (body part, object, notecard, etc. etc.), and of course, the asset's UUID.

Lots of things can make this slow: load from all the other avatars using "your" inventory database at the same time, network traffic inside the grid, load on the middleware services and sims, meddling by the Illuminati.