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Second Life uses my entire internet connection


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Hello everyone! 

When a computer on my network is using Second Life, it causes all other computers/devices on the network to lag to the point of being unusable. While Second Life is being played, I can run a ping to www.google.com and the moment someone moves to a new sim, etc. in Second Life ping response times increase to 2000-3000ms.

My internet connection is 1 gbps down, though generally we see around 700-800 Mbps down. 

I am using the Firestorm viewer. I have tried Second Life viewer as well. 

I have checked the network settings and set it to 700 kbps.

The system that is playing Second Life is exceptionally powerful and is used to stream games regularly in 720p/1080p.

Changing settings to reduce draw distance and graphics seems to have very little to no effect. I have tried increasing cache settings to the maximum.

To be clear, this happens with Second Life specifically and can be consistently repeated. No other game or application has caused the issue to date.

I have tried everything I can think of to resolve this issue. 

If anyone has any ideas of what I might try or how I might contact Linden Labs support (I can't seem to make a ticket about anything close to this kind of issue), I would genuinely appreciate it.

Edited by Dimitri Silvansky
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You can run Second Life without issues even with just 3-4 Mbps actually i am on SL17B and there are 40+ avatars while at the same time watching Netflix

with just a 12Mbps Down/1Mbps Up DSL (my current ping is 205ms cause i am on the other side of the Atlantic.)

Check your pc for Trojans etc if you are on windows. 1 Gbps is .. plenty even if your provider decides to throttle it.

 

Fzy4hDK.png

 

Edited by Nick0678
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I appreciate the reply! I have run AVAS checks on the system and it is clean. Also, this issue only happens in Second Life and at no other time. I feel like if it were malware it would happen at times when Second Life was not in use.

I have updated the OP with the following info: 

Quote

 

I have tried Second Life viewer as well. 

I have checked the network settings and set it to 700 kbps.

 

 

Edited by Dimitri Silvansky
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4 hours ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

If anyone has any ideas of what I might try

Turn off ALM and see if things improve without having to throw specular and bump maps at your Graphics card (although I am not certain if the client downloads all the textures anyway even if ALM is off).

 

Finally, be selective about the places you go to, as you pointed out, in a busy sim with lots of mesh and very complex avatars somebody coming or going causes a lot of update information to be sent to your PC which all has to to be squeezed through that network line.

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If you have not already done so then try disabling media auto-play just in case a myriad of stuff in world around you is trying to automatically play and stream stuff even though you don't want it. Also disable music stream auto-play for the testing.

It could also be useful to totally power down your computer, router and modem (if you have one). Power them back up and see if that makes any difference.

Finally try using a wired connection instead of wi-fi if that is possible as it has dramatically less overhead.

As you said you use Firestorm then you may want to head on over to their support group secondlife:///app/group/3a1be8d4-01f3-bc1a-2703-442f0cc8f2dd/about as their people know a heck of a lot.

 

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6 hours ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

I appreciate the reply! I have run AVAS checks on the system and it is clean. Also, this issue only happens in Second Life and at no other time. I feel like if it were malware it would happen at times when Second Life was not in use.

I have updated the OP with the following info: 

 

Ok use Netlimiter and set the allowed bandwidth for Firestrorm to 700kbps and see if it still happens. The free edition should be fine for that.

You also get to see what your other applications are doing.  If your internet still gets messed up then its something else.

nl-info-cnn-location.png

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8 hours ago, Nick0678 said:

You can run Second Life without issues even with just 3-4 Mbps actually i am on SL17B and there are 40+ avatars while at the same time watching Netflix

with just a 12Mbps Down/1Mbps Up DSL (my current ping is 205ms cause i am on the other side of the Atlantic.)

Check your pc for Trojans etc if you are on windows. 1 Gbps is .. plenty even if your provider decides to throttle it.

 

Fzy4hDK.png

 

I gotta ask. What viewer are you running that your logging in at 3-4 Mbps on SL? I see it saying Firestorm x64 at the top and if that's the case how did you change your settings to basically rezz nothing? Inquiring minds now wanna know. lol😁

I generally use Radegast if I want to log in like that mate, but I can see that actually being useful for those of us who want to log in quick with large inventories. lol😁

To the OP Second Life and especially Firestorm eats a lot of bandwidth up on the way in the door when your logging in. What I advise is trying out Singularity viewer and see if you have the same results or better performance. It could just be simply a case of hardware issues and Singularity is the better fit. Give that a try and see how you go. Good luck mate.😎👍

Edited by Velk Kerang
Corrections.
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Thank you all for the replies! With regard to concerns about the computer's performance, here are its relevant specs:

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus - ROG Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi) ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair - Dominator Platinum RGB 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB FTW3 ULTRA HYBRID GAMING Video Card
Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

I feel as though with those specs, and a 1gbps connection, Second Life nominally shouldn't be able to choke out the computer/internet regardless of what sims I go to, especially with graphics settings turned down as I've tried to do.

I have absolutely tried power cycled the computer and network setup (modem, router) and the connection is hardwired (ethernet).

I would be willing to try Netlimiter, but that doesn't seem like a solution in of itself.

Thank you all for the suggestions!

 

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4 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

I gotta ask. What viewer are you running that your logging in at 3-4 Mbps on SL? I see it saying Firestorm x64 at the top and if that's the case how did you change your settings to basically rezz nothing? Inquiring minds now wanna know. lol😁

I generally use Radegast if I want to log in like that mate, but I can see that actually being useful for those of us who want to log in quick with large inventories. lol😁

To the OP Second Life and especially Firestorm eats a lot of bandwidth up on the way in the door when your logging in. What I advise is trying out Singularity viewer and see if you have the same results or better performance. It could just be simply a case of hardware issues and Singularity is the better fit. Give that a try and see how you go. Good luck mate.😎👍

Any viewer will work even with less than 3 Mbps Download Bandwidth.

Having a "slow internet"  doesn't mean Second Life won't work, it will only need more time in order to download and rez things (of course the more the better.. up to limit).

 

This test is with  my bandwidth throttled (sudo wondershaper wlp3s0 4096 1024) and i am on SL17B using MId/High Graphics Max Non Imp:10 AVMr7eDPA.png.thumb.jpeg.5b66286889d64f981970cf207a324904.jpeg

 

---------------------------------

 

Regarding the "rezz nothing" part Firestorm has a text mode login you could try that.

(My own method to "rezz nothing" is still under testing on my own Client and a Firestorm that i use for debugging.)

ZJeIohI

Edited by Nick0678
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Speculating a bit, but what is the cache-size set to? The default setting is rather low, only two gigabytes, I think. You can increase it to ten gigabytes. That's several minutes of traffic on your connection, and if you're in a busy place a small cache may not be holding on to textures, and always reloading them.

There's another setting for caching using the graphics card RAM. Compressed textures in the disk cache, uncompressed when stored in RAM. I doubt that affects network traffic, but the default settings on both are set for machines with way less than what you appear to have.

 

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14 hours ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

My internet connection is 1 gbps down, though generally we see around 700-800 Mbps down. 

Something is horribly wrong. But what?

Draw distance? See if turning down draw distance has an effect. That means you load fewer assets.

"UDP data received" doesn't show most of the traffic. The way SL works currently, there's a small amount of UDP traffic between the viewer and the sim servers it can see. Those are short messages mostly telling the viewer what assets to display, and where. The assets (meshes and textures) take a completely different path. They come in using HTTP, like web pages (they even have URLs) and come from completely separate servers, using Akamai caches and Amazon Web Services file servers. Most of the bandwidth used is on that route, and it doesn't count in "UDP data received".

Now, when you move to a new sim, or continuously if you're moving fast, lots of assets have to be loaded. This usually causes a big transient load for about 15 seconds, but should not be able to fill a 1Gb/s link. That load usually peaks somewhere below 30Mb/s. (Why it does is an interesting question, but that's another discussion.)

Can you run something that shows network traffic on a graph and show that? Start with Second Life in a nearly empty space, like a big sandbox, then do a teleport to someplace with lots of detailed objects. Show the network traffic as that happens, please. That may help.

 

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1 hour ago, arabellajones said:

Speculating a bit, but what is the cache-size set to? The default setting is rather low, only two gigabytes, I think. You can increase it to ten gigabytes. That's several minutes of traffic on your connection, and if you're in a busy place a small cache may not be holding on to textures, and always reloading them.

There's another setting for caching using the graphics card RAM. Compressed textures in the disk cache, uncompressed when stored in RAM. I doubt that affects network traffic, but the default settings on both are set for machines with way less than what you appear to have.

 

I appreciate the help. However, in the OP I had mention I have the cache size maxed out. Thank you though!

1 hour ago, animats said:

Something is horribly wrong. But what?

Draw distance? See if turning down draw distance has an effect. That means you load fewer assets.

"UDP data received" doesn't show most of the traffic. The way SL works currently, there's a small amount of UDP traffic between the viewer and the sim servers it can see. Those are short messages mostly telling the viewer what assets to display, and where. The assets (meshes and textures) take a completely different path. They come in using HTTP, like web pages (they even have URLs) and come from completely separate servers, using Akamai caches and Amazon Web Services file servers. Most of the bandwidth used is on that route, and it doesn't count in "UDP data received".

Now, when you move to a new sim, or continuously if you're moving fast, lots of assets have to be loaded. This usually causes a big transient load for about 15 seconds, but should not be able to fill a 1Gb/s link. That load usually peaks somewhere below 30Mb/s. (Why it does is an interesting question, but that's another discussion.)

Can you run something that shows network traffic on a graph and show that? Start with Second Life in a nearly empty space, like a big sandbox, then do a teleport to someplace with lots of detailed objects. Show the network traffic as that happens, please. That may help.

 

Thank you as well! Again, per the OP, I mentioned I've turned draw distance down to the minimum as well as other graphical settings as well as part of my testing.

The section of your post regarding UDP data received and how SL loads assets is very compelling though. I can see about getting it graphed, no problem, however anecdotally I can tell you that when traveling to new sims, in the top right Firestorm's "lag" meter does show that "Network" goes red and says something like "network issue or peer to peer." 

Something perhaps even more interesting, I installed SL on a 2nd and 3rd machine and went to the same sim(s) and saw no network latency whatsoever. This tells me that the issue is something related to the specific system. I am tracking it down but my suspicion at the moment is that something is going on with the specific onboard NIC (Intel I211 Gigabit) of the system. I am going to try to drop a new NIC in the system and if that resolves the issue I will make sure to update this thread with that info as well.

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2 hours ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

Something perhaps even more interesting, I installed SL on a 2nd and 3rd machine and went to the same sim(s) and saw no network latency whatsoever. This tells me that the issue is something related to the specific system. I am tracking it down but my suspicion at the moment is that something is going on with the specific onboard NIC (Intel I211 Gigabit) of the system. I am going to try to drop a new NIC in the system and if that resolves the issue I will make sure to update this thread with that info as well.

Yes, if the network hardware is introducing errors, expect lots of retransmits and wasted network bandwidth.

It's really hard for SL to saturate a 1Gb/s connection. Something has to be broken for that to happen.

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I seem to remember some issues with some drivers for that part accidentally defaulting to no-negotiation.  Depending on what it is connected to via the LAN cable, you could end up with a half-duplex connection resulting in a lot of collisions.  Might verify that it is auto-negotiating properly before getting out the wallet and screwdriver.

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Just now, Ardy Lay said:

I seem to remember some issues with some drivers for that part accidentally defaulting to no-negotiation.  Depending on what it is connected to via the LAN cable, you could end up with a half-duplex connection resulting in a lot of collisions.  Might verify that it is auto-negotiating properly before getting out the wallet and screwdriver.

I checked the settings of the NIC itself and made sure it was set to Auto Negotiate. I did a clean reinstall of the drivers using both the MOBO and Intel's driverset to set. (Not at the same time obviously). I'm not sure how else to test for that, or resolve it, to be honest.

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4 minutes ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

I checked the settings of the NIC itself and made sure it was set to Auto Negotiate. I did a clean reinstall of the drivers using both the MOBO and Intel's driverset to set. (Not at the same time obviously). I'm not sure how else to test for that, or resolve it, to be honest.

Just use a wifi dongle and connect with that wirelesly to sl. You probably have one around.

If it works fine then you can troubleshoot the onboard nic adapter but if you still have the same problems then you are looking at the wrong thing.

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@animats

Update:

  • Dropping the new NIC into the system and disabling the MOBO NIC had no effect, the issue persisted.
  • Even though I had tried it already before, I did a factory reset on the router (R7000), the issue persisted.
  • I am going to try direct connecting to the modem if that fails I plan to try getting a clean HDD and installing Windows and SL and nothing else.

Finally, I am still seeing that when traveling to new sims, in the top right Firestorm's "lag/connection" meter does show that "Network" goes to red and says "Bad Connection or P2P." I'm not sure what this tells us, if anything.

I am honestly running out of ideas for troubleshooting. :(

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R

2 hours ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

@animats

Update:

  • Dropping the new NIC into the system and disabling the MOBO NIC had no effect, the issue persisted.
  • Even though I had tried it already before, I did a factory reset on the router (R7000), the issue persisted.
  • I am going to try direct connecting to the modem if that fails I plan to try getting a clean HDD and installing Windows and SL and nothing else.

Finally, I am still seeing that when traveling to new sims, in the top right Firestorm's "lag/connection" meter does show that "Network" goes to red and says "Bad Connection or P2P." I'm not sure what this tells us, if anything.

I am honestly running out of ideas for troubleshooting. :(

Replace Ethernet cable?

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@animats

Happy update! I wired the computer directly to the modem and the issue went away. 

I then went out and bought a new router and that has resolved the issue. I'm not sure why a Nighthawk R7000 had a issue specifically and seemingly only with Second Life, but, this issue has me so frustrated I will absolutely avoid buying Netgear in the future.

 

TLDR - Netgear Nighthawk R7000 was the culprit.

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1 hour ago, Dimitri Silvansky said:

TLDR - Netgear Nighthawk R7000 was the culprit.

Oh. See this report from a voice over IP service that uses UDP:

"Firmware issues have been found on all Netgear Nighthawk devices causing issues with blocked UDP ports. The 2 most commonly used versions of the Nighthawk routers have been tested with findings below.

  • Netgear R6400v2 models on firmware versions newer than R6400v2-V1.0.2.60_10.0.44 will experience dropped calls and connectivity issues. The newer firmware revisions block outbound UDP connections on ports 1024-65535 at random.
  • Netgear R7000p models on firmware versions newer than V1.0.0.58_1.0.50 will experience dropped calls and connectivity issues. The newer firmware revisions block outbound UDP connections on ports 1024-65535 at random."

Second Life has UDP traffic on ports 53, 3478, 3479, 5060, 5062, and 12000-29999.

Evil middlebox problems.

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