Is there a way to run Secondlife without the P2P sharing, as my ISP doesn't allow P2P?

[Tabrina Ametza]

Basically my ISP allows P2P sharing, but it slows it down to the point where it will kill the internet for me. Is there anyway to run SL without the P2P or am I basically going to have to just stop playing SL?

[Ann Otoole]

SL is not P2P. Is your ISP daft? All the servers you connect to are LL's unless you allow media in which case there is no way to know what is being done to your computer. So turn off all media.

[Void Singer]

if your ISP is traffic shaping your connection to SL, then you should contact them and discuss it with them, as this should not be happening

Note: proper traffic shaping can easily block rate limit p2p without affecting live content connections to streamed applications... I've been on two ISP that do that, and neither ever interfered with media or SL, or connections to other treamed worlds so It's not an isue of not being able to tell them apart

[Pauline Darkfury]

You may find http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Configuring_your_firewall_to_allow_access_to_Second_Life useful either personally, or to give to your ISP, to help them positively identify SL traffic.  As the others have said, SL is not P2P sharing, but a badly designed/implemented/configured P2P detector at your ISP may get falsely triggered by the patterns of network traffic generated by SL.  The wiki page above should contain everything they need to positively identify SL traffic and exempt it from any P2P filtering, throttling, or alerts they may have.

If that's the issue and your ISP just can't cope with that, you need to change ISP to a company that has competent technical staff, and will benefit from doing so in the long run, as they will continue to damage your overall net experience through flawed anti-P2P systems.

SL does use a lot of bandwidth, especially if you have parcel audio, media, and/or voice enabled and in heavy use.  If the overall issue is bandwidth / total traffic, you may wish to consider disabling some of those optional components (streaming audio, media, or voice), at least at times when you don't actively need them.  Alternatively, upgrading your Internet service tarrif to allow higher overall bandwidth usage may be a solution.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

SL is not a software package like a game.  You can't "just" download it and carry on.  Nearly everything in the world, how it looks, how it sounds, how it moves and what it does, is the creation of us, the residents.  Between us we make millions of new things every week.  Attempting to download an "upgrade pack" to cover all that would probably mean your internet was permanently connected trying to keep up!  As it is, SL just sends the data you need for what you can see (hear, touch, etc) as and when you need it.  That's what confuses the bad software.

BUT there is an option that you can download and play, albeit all alone :-(

Opensim (http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page) is for people who want to run their own Second Life - style grids.  Since a grid can start with a single sim and since you'll be the only person there your PC will almost certainly be able to cope with it, whatever the specs.  What you do is run opensim to create/control your own Second Life then you log into your own PC with your normal viewer.  If you have the computer power you can support more sims at once and even make it public - but then you're the host so you'll have all the ISP issues and then some ^^

Still, it is good for practicing builds, trying our textures and all the other things that you care to do on your own.  Once things are looking/working as you want you shake the ISP awake and re-create it in Second Life