World wide bandwith problems?

[Linda Brynner]

I've been reading an older article ( 2008 ) from zdNet that worldwide shortage of bandwith is about to happen within a few years (it was in Dutch, sorry). Specially Google and the USA in general seem to be massive users on world scale. It was advised ISP’s to change to fiber connections. I think Linden Lab has already done that earlier in their effort to make SL more stable, however in SL we are of course also highly depended on hopping points in our internet connections to the LL’s servers.

I have also noticed ~10% packet losses on lever3.net servers which are used to connect to second life, at least to their website. Although I could understand that the region servers may be separated from the secondlife.com, could it very much explain the packet losses sometimes seen in-world in the statistics window ( Ctrl-Shift-1), as I have seen connected to their website with a virtual route tracer reporting packet losses at lever3.net.

Can anyone confirm all this, because if this is all true can it be another reason why the growth of Second Life stalls in terms of concurrent users and regions? In other words, more than ( let’s say ) 100k unique simultaneously logins likely becomes highly technically problematic and out of control of LL due to world wide bandwith developments and structural packet losses at hopping points?
If so is it also the reason why LL pushes behind the firewall solutions and not pushing the SL grid in any advertisement?

Maybe a Linden could also reply here... maybe

Thank you in advance, Linda

[Poenald Palen]

I think they turn people away when concurrency reaches levels or the system is stressed, I am sure they have stuff to check stats and adjust accordingly. They had issues with griefers taking out sims and replicating balls I remember lol. I was not a member, but stressing the sims and the grid where part of what I saw and even joined in a bit during a beta test on the aditi (beta) grid! So...well, I think they are carefull and do have limits. A confirmation obviously is way better than a guy who was bored once joining a migration accross sims test lol.

 

Recently I heard about a TV show streaming website having issues with to much bandwidth driving up thier costs etc. and they just started showing limited shows. Bitorrent is where many went, but then you start to see the creeping of a huge ISP problem like you are saying! NOt only that, but all the major softtware players seem to be focusing on web based subscription software using cloud computing stuff. SO they want the really neat and prized code to never touch your hardrive and you just get proccessed data servera with display and light easy stuff client side!! This means you are relying on the web, hackers can't easily see code and rip it, and bandwidth becomes vital. I think it is a shame, but profits and losses for some companies wiht rich media (video, music etc.) have issues and pre-internet years you can see how price dealt with bandwidth. The FCC, here in the US, regulates the airwaves and there have been changes to where the old TV channels are all digital now. All theold TV's with antenna's can't pick up a station without a digital converter and the bandwidth that was once used is now free. Bandwidth is already an issue to much they are changing laws and regulation, rendering things obsolete.

Another example of bandwidth usage creeping up is a the eBook devices that use wireless nationwide (maybe even worldwide these days?) to download books! If you combine those with a peer to peer network you can see how you can cut out middle men and get a bestseller from anthers device next door or in your town! So peer to peer will maybe pick up the slack by makign network connections with each other (devices having a read only pubic folder available?) and help reduce stuff. it is a logistics type of thing and many times with roads, water systems and various other infrastructure it is a simple to see solution but much more complex to implement and today we use the internet and have many systems while over a billion can't even get clean water, forget about plumbing and wirelessly downlaoded books! I am amazed when I see a old book, 40 years on various shelves and STILL not using much energy at all. It can travel around the world, it does totally wireless AND it rarely is obsolete (even dead langauges get revived by scholars!) over hundreds or even more years! Not only that but there is advantage in it's non flickering pages, you can retain more information from reading a paper book than a phospherous glowing screen! Of course, they take up space BUT that stores heat and evens out temperatures. Large walls or even water filled tubes are used to store heat in passive solar design...I wonder if a nice book case by a south facing window does similar? So the books might even save me energy while my PC uses it and makes me more forgetful...plus it crashes, which can sort of happen with books when spines go bad and pages come loose. But overall books are way way more reliable. In fact, that is what I should do now! I should read and go to bed lol.

Thanks for the interesting thoughts on bandwidth, I keep forgetting this and then worrying about it. Glad to see I am not the only one thinking what will happen in this world as we gather more relience on internet bandwidth. My money is on wireless usage increasing and people just sort of gettign over the hype and putting on a coat and going to real events in person. So, no sim dwelling when you have some fun place to go and play interactive computer games using small local bandwidth with zero inernet connections fora  fun jumping, shouting and fun phsyical interface driven LAN party! This is a sort of backwards thing mixed with new stuff. You dont' sit and poke buttons but thrust a rubber sword around when you fight ina  dungeon. I think enhancements in technology will maybe lead to virtual reality taking a larger role as we work out some kinks and get increbibly fast alternative interfaces. Like a Wii meets lan party with way more advanced interfaces PLUS simply using libraries LAN with enhanced security may lead to people chattign and interacting outside the library! less mental stress and mental disorders via freindly breif interactions? Who knows, but societies may change to be more dense as energy costs rise, so why not just walk to the library and get a copy from them via a LAN when you want to see a movie? It makes sense, but requires culture changes....so maybe not so easy and has it's own inherent issues? Like more people on the streets + bad economy = more theft or general crime? Ah, who nows, maybe no more internet for so cheap is the only answer? But, SVG is promising as a way to reduce the amount of data transfered, just have a standard buttona nd shade etc. library!? Why? Well...many websites look so similar anyway it is like just using colors and frames in HTML but with huge style gains as you have some shades with a few parameters? So the web can get lighter overall if new CMS and plugins are broat about, HTML is simplya  markup langauge and can be extended and have the browser pick up the slack instead of the networks by defining a few shades, grads and bevels etc.? Well, off to bed for me.

[Linda Brynner]

Thank you for your reply. And wow ty for the time to write it. It's an eye opener.

[Matti Deigan]

Due to the nature of how networks work, it can be the route your isp takes to connect to the internet. This is defined by the middleware, consisting of routers and servers. Theres also the fact that all of the servers of LL are indeed mainly located in the US, there might be at times bottlenecks when connecting through some routes. This is why bigger companies have done "locational" servers which are separated into regions (such as blizzard). With the way how Second Life works, this would be a difficult system to "separate" into regional worlds.

Forexample, when doing a trace on a simple ping to www.secondlife.com from my schools library, in finland, the route took the following:

school > schools isp > Helsinki > Sweden > Denmark >New York > San Jose > San Francisco > Linden Labs.

and from my home, it took a different path. althought still going through level3 networks, which routes also vary.

[Linda Brynner]

Also very helpful ty.

SL indeed highly depends on all equipment in the middle.

The technical department of LL has asked me to perform this test, ands i quote:

“a) Holding down the Windows key and pressing the R key once, Type cmd (Upper or lowercase) then press Enter.

    (b) At the command prompt type pathping login.agni.lindenlab.com > C:\Users\pathping.txt

    © Then press Enter, allow the application to run for at least 10 minutes.

This application tests the connection between your PC and our server, saving the information to a text file on your local hard drive.”

Strangly it reports no packet losses, but when i do my own visual route testing it reported a 50% packet loss at: Above.net 11|64.125.26.206. It seems we connect to Second Life via Above.net.

And indeed, indeed connecting to SL so very much depends on all stuff in between, and since bandwith might develop to become more scarce in the future ( as it seems ), a highly more advanced/different technology will be needed to eventually make something happen for the masses to be able to view at eachother or to a distant location far away on a large screen or some kind of a holodeck even. If human nature even wants it lol.

You might try the test above too, to see what happens in your case.