Just what has changed?

[arabellajones]

Second Life seems to have gone badly downhill since the summer, particularly with sim-crossing problems.

But very little is said about the changes.

I know my ISP, in the UK, makes special provision for games traffic, trying to provide a clean connection. Second Life has been on their list for several years. But, if I have problems, they expect me to use one of those rather frightening traffic logging tools, something called <i>Wireshark</i>, which I admit I find pretty intimidating. They will check and interpret the results, not me, and they can tell what packets are being missed by their high-priority system.

But has anything actually changed?

Well, there's this CDN malarkey. They'll be seeing a lot of traffic coming from different servers, and I am not sure which domain names, or URLs, might be missed by their filters. I've been trying to find out when the testing started, but it looks as though my problems started some time before that.

Another claim I have seen, with zero mention from anyone else, is that all the SL servers are now in Phoenix. It was something TPV developers were told about at one of those meetings, or so they say. All I can say is that over the last six months I started seeing some odd behaviour on connections to Phoenix. My ISP seems to have a fairly direct connection, but Speedtest reports some rather slow speeds and ping times. There were a couple of times when SL servers in Phoenix seemed to vanish. Which is one reason why I am a little reluctant to believe it.

Again, no date, though I infer from one or two things that this happened no earlier than the second half of September. The only definite source I have is http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_speedtest which describes how to test connection speed to set the capacity limit in the viewer. The only date is when that page was edited, which is very recent. But it tells people to use a test server in Tucson. For a while, back in August, there wasn't a test server in Phoenix. It was one of those bad times. So it could have happened long before that page was edited.

Of course, it could be the Viewer I am using. But everybody seems to want to blame somebody else. "No, there are no bugs in Firestorm", and now most of the problems I asked about are on the Firestorm bug list. I only found out about that because somebody happened to report them being mentioned at a TPV Developer meeting.

I am still a Premium member for a few days. I don't plan to renew. Just what was I paying for? And this really is your best effort?

I feel I wasted my money.

[Buttacwup Float]

Not 100% sure what you are asking. A lot of things have changed in the past 6 months. I am not really sure what issues you are seeing either. I would suggest that you install the latest viewer from LL. And use that as a baseline for performance. There are very few other viewers are up to date with all of the latest code (not to imply latest is better...just most recent. 

The CDN is only implemented on a very small number of regions right now, but it should make things much nicer for people outside the US when implemented because textures and such will load from a server much closer to you. I dont know if servers have all been colapsed to a single data center. I imagine that would be a very bad idea. Perhaps it is more like they all run out of Phoenix, unless Phoenix goes offline then they swap back to Dallas or somewhere...who knows.

Anyway...start with the latest released LL viewer and see how things perform there. 

 

[Sassy Romano]

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arabellajones wrote:

 

I am still a Premium member for a few days. I don't plan to renew. Just what was I paying for? And this really is your best effort?

I feel I wasted my money.

---

Well i'm not sure what you expected from premium membership other than a) a stipend b) right to purchase mainland b) more options for support.

It has never included a difference in performance.

Don't forget that many teleport issues are due to scripts being paused and handed off to the next region (plus walking the variables, converting to different data types and back again.)  When you get TP issues, always detach everything and try again, it's refreshing how fast a naked avatar (naked of attachments) will TP.

[Nalates Urriah]

Whirly Fizzel is in the UK and has provided performance information on the standard and CDN regions. CDN is reducing ping by 80%+/- and download time by as much as 90%. Plus the CDN servers are in Europe.

Actually quite a lot is said about the changes taking place. However, the Lindens don't publish general notices of the changes until well after th testing starts and is near final roll out. Blogs like mine and Inara's keep people up to date with current technical news. Others like Ciaran's and New World Notes report in a less technical way. The SL Forum in Technology-Servers report changes every week. The Alternate Viewers page updates almost every week. You can see the RC and Project viewers and their release notes to see what is being fixed and added.

Firestorm is the most stable, crash free viewer going. They have left a number of features found in the SL Viewer out of Firestorm because they trigger annoying bugs. 

It is important that when you ask a tech question (or in your case rant) include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need.  To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

It also helps to know if you are using a laptop or a desktop and a wired or wireless connection between the computer and gateway and/or between the gateway and ISP. T-Mobile and other ISP’s use a wireless system to connect to you.

Without information all we can do is guess. That means you have to try all our bad guesses and eliminate them one by one. This is easier for all of us, if you give us good information to start with.

You can test your connection to SL. You can also find which server you are connecting to and where it is located. You don't have to take other people's word. Open HELP->About... and get the server IP or name and geo-locate it on one of the free web sites. This morning I connect to servers in San Francisco.

Read both of these articles:

http://blog.nalates.net/2014/08/18/512k-internet-slow-down/ - Don't expect your ISP to tell you about this one.

http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ - Having a good internet connection is not the same as having a good connection to SL.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Nalates, those geo-location websites are very unreliable. They tend to return the location of the corporate address of the company which is assigned the address block. So I am not surprised that you are getting told that the IP addresses you're connected to are in San Francisco.

If you did a traceroute you might get a better clue from the domain names. I know that my ISP routes from London to SecondLife's network via Level3, and all of the connections I have checked lately are passing through machines with "PHOENIX" as part of the hostnames, where SecondLife connects to Level3. That could be just chance.

To be honest, it's such an obvious misconce[tion about geolocation on the internet that it makes me wonder a little about your other advice, most of which seems a bit irrelevant to what Arabella wrote. It's important when trying to sort out a specific problem report, but for what Arabella described it looks more like somebody writing without reading.

What the hell do all those details matter for what Arabella described? They look like an excuse for not answering the question.

[arabellajones]

"more options for support" turned out to be pretty damn useless. And, while the stipend does fill a lot of the gap, does it really make sense to buy L$, by any means, when general SL performance has slumped as much as it has appeared to from here.

[arabellajones]

So, when I ask about possible changes to what Linden Lab is doing, which appear to be, at best, unreliably documented, you ignore all I ask about, dismiss it as a rant, and dump a load of hlepy answers on me that blame somebody else for everything.

I can only assume you don't have an answer.

[Dresden Ceriano]

Well, that's a nice attitude to take with someone who is just trying to be helpful.  Not everyone here will answer your questions to your level of satisfaction... but then again, no one here is required to try to help you at all.

...Dres *rolls eyes*

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

arabellajones wrote:

Second Life seems to have gone badly downhill since the summer, particularly with sim-crossing problems.

But very little is said about the changes.

I know my ISP, in the UK, makes special provision for games traffic, trying to provide a clean connection. Second Life has been on their list for several years. But, if I have problems, they expect me to use one of those rather frightening traffic logging tools, something called <i>Wireshark</i>, which I admit I find pretty intimidating. They will check and interpret the results, not me, and they can tell what packets are being missed by their high-priority system.

But has anything actually changed?

Well, there's this CDN malarkey. They'll be seeing a lot of traffic coming from different servers, and I am not sure which domain names, or URLs, might be missed by their filters. I've been trying to find out when the testing started, but it looks as though my problems started some time before that.

Another claim I have seen, with zero mention from anyone else, is that all the SL servers are now in Phoenix. It was something TPV developers were told about at one of those meetings, or so they say. All I can say is that over the last six months I started seeing some odd behaviour on connections to Phoenix. My ISP seems to have a fairly direct connection, but Speedtest reports some rather slow speeds and ping times. There were a couple of times when SL servers in Phoenix seemed to vanish. Which is one reason why I am a little reluctant to believe it.

Again, no date, though I infer from one or two things that this happened no earlier than the second half of September. The only definite source I have is 

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_speedtest

 which describes how to test connection speed to set the capacity limit in the viewer. The only date is when that page was edited, which is very recent. But it tells people to use a test server in Tucson. For a while, back in August, there wasn't a test server in Phoenix. It was one of those bad times. So it could have happened long before that page was edited.

Of course, it could be the Viewer I am using. But everybody seems to want to blame somebody else. "No, there are no bugs in Firestorm", and now most of the problems I asked about are on the Firestorm bug list. I only found out about that because somebody happened to report them being mentioned at a TPV Developer meeting.

I am still a Premium member for a few days. I don't plan to renew. Just what was I paying for? And this really is your best effort?

I feel I wasted my money.

---

"Speedtest" uses a series of "host" servers in various locations who have arrangements with them. The presence or absence of a server in any given location is only a reflection of what sort of deals Ookla, the company that runs Speedtest, has made. If there was no test server in Phoenix all that meant is that nobody there agreed to serve as host for a while.

Your connection path to the SL servers is determined by your ISP and the contracts they have with various "backbone" providers. Problems at any point in this path can cause you problems that people on another ISP may not see, and they may not be in direct control of your ISP either - a while ago people in Europe were having issues, not with their ISP's or Linden Lab, but with an internet backbone company called "above.net" that their ISP's apparently had contracts with. You obviously are friends with Wolf who regularly comes on the forums to discuss sim crossing issues from his point of view but other people often don't have the same problems. The very idea of "sim crossings" is a bad one and they have always been erratic.

I keep a pretty close eye on developments in SL and I know of nothing done recently that would change things, nor have I seen any noteworthy changes in performance. The CDN is a service provider called Highwinds Network Group that also performs similar services for Steam, etc. so they should be known to your ISP.

[Sassy Romano]

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arabellajones wrote:

"more options for support" turned out to be pretty damn useless. And, while the stipend does fill a lot of the gap, does it really make sense to buy L$, by any means, when general SL performance has slumped as much as it has appeared to from here.

---

If you're not getting value from the premium sub then yes you should not renew.  The "benefits" are tenuous at best.  Buying L$, well that's a different matter, that's just a cost of entertainment if you want to buy things but I suppose the issue is that not everyone is seeing the performance issue that you are so I don't really have anything to offer beyond that which has already been collectively said.

Just do what feels right for you

[SaraCarena]

Gave up on vehicles like 18 months ago coz they were sooo sucky.....but recently took up boating and ballooning around the blake sea....sim crossings still suck, well some times are better than others.

Care to name an shame your ISP?....some in the UK will throttle your connection for watching too many vids on BBC Iplayer at prime time...... got throttled once but didn`t even notice at the time ....one day my connection crapped out and kept dropping, that was a local cable problem...well talking to my isp support revealed I was throttled back in april, didn`t notice, no biggie.

Yes LL are making BIG changes to how content gets to your viewer, Yes sl has it`s quirks...

/me just TP`s naked!!.....lol Sassy :smileyhappy:

[Perrie Juran]

---

SaraCarena wrote:

Gave up on vehicles like 18 months ago coz they were sooo sucky.....but recently took up boating and ballooning around the blake sea....sim crossings still suck, well some times are better than others.

Care to name an shame your ISP?....some in the UK will throttle your connection for watching too many vids on BBC Iplayer at prime time...... got throttled once but didn`t even notice at the time ....one day my connection crapped out and kept dropping, that was a local cable problem...well talking to my isp support revealed I was throttled back in april, didn`t notice, no biggie.

Yes LL are making BIG changes to how content gets to your viewer, Yes sl has it`s quirks...

/me just TP`s naked!!.....lol Sassy :smileyhappy:

---

We could get off on a large tangent here on this subject. 

It really falls under the larger umbrella of Net Neutrality.

There are protocols for how data is supposed to be handled on the Internet but then the ISP's do things to shape and limit how the data flows.  And it sucks when they don't even tell us they are doing it although usually it is mentioned in the fine print of their contracts.

It seems like a long time ago now but we used to have problems like this:

"The rapid growth of online videos, music and games has created a new Internet sin: using it too much.

Comcast has punished some transgressors by cutting off their Internet service, arguing that excessive downloaders hog Internet capacity and slow down the network for other customers. The company declines to reveal its download limits.  [my emphasis]

"You have no way of knowing how much is too much," said Sandra Spalletta of Rockville, whose Internet service was suspended in March after Comcast sent her a letter warning that she and her teenage son were using too much bandwidth."

That was in 2007 but in 2012 it began to raise its ugly head again.

We need to let our Gov'ts in the places where they do regulate how the ISP's behave know how we feel.

 

[Ohjiro Watanabe]

If you ping this address asset-cdn.agni.lindenlab.com it will give you the connection speed when CDN is enabled on the sims you visit.

My connections speed from the UK is fine, but still I am looking forward to the improvements that CDN will bring.

[paddyspub]

That's one of the problems with buying privileges behind a layer, as with Second Life and the internet means by which you access Second Life.

Happens with everything else too, of course.

I don't know anything about these lag problems and any of the changes of which you all speak, but also remember that these Linden Lab guys are hosting a sub-world with no subscription fees.  All their profit comes from within that world, SFAIK.

Also, your post did have the airs of a rant along with the technical details, Arabelle.  That's not always a derogatory statement.  I do it a lot myself.

Hope this helps.