Each year, after the Christmas gifts have been unwrapped and all those people who treated themselves or family to new computers/Internet access, Secondlife sees a surge of new signups and more people using it than ever - the problem with that?
Quite simply the grid cannot handle it!Most of us who spend regular time inworld are aware of the issues and mostly what is behind it - basically once the grid reaches 75k+ online everything goes down the toilet - teleports, transactions, rezzing, building even dressing becomes problematic.
Lets have a look at the last few days:
[RESOLVED] Logins and In-world Issues Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am PST [Resolved 10:45am PST] - The database has recovered and all issues have been resolved.
[10:30am PST] - We are currently experiencing a problem with the database. There may be difficulties with logging in, rezzing objects, completing transactions, and searching. We are aware of this issue and our ops team are working to resolve it as swiftly as possible. In the mean time, please avoid making important transactions or rezzing no-copy objects.
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues/Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 04:10 pm PST[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 7th, 2009 at 02:58 pm PST[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 8th, 2009 at 01:34 pm PST[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 01:54 pm PST[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled and Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 04:53 pm PST[RESOVLED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am PST[RESOLVED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:39 pm PSTEach of these represents times when Logins have been restricted, a black week for any Secondlife business.
Some have called for allowing only premium accounts to log in at these times and yet others slam this notion as many who would like to go premium cannot do so, therefore making the idea unjust.
Then there is the question of bot activity, if as Linden Lab numbers suggest, 10% of those signed in are bots then surely shutting these out would allow real players more of a chance to log in?
But how do we or Linden Lab know which accounts are bots?
Age old question and one many have tried to answer - but to be honest our answers do not matter Linden Lab will do what Linden Lab chooses as always.
I am not technically minded but even I can see the grid is struggling - Linden Lab says 10% bots - most believe that is a very conservative estimate it is more likely to be around 25 - 30%. Now how about if the bots were registered? Then when the Grid is struggling bots are logged out? Wouldn't that make more sense than locking out paying Residents? Even those who run bots would rather have paying Residents inworld than their bots surely?
Hopefully with all the grid issues Linden Lab will finally make a move on the traffic scam that causes most to use bots - once the reason for them is gone it will make the need for bots redundant. But for now Linden Lab have chosen to chase their tails and deal with issues as they arise rather than dealing with the root cause (as always).
Dana Vanmoer
We have had reports of old IMs, some as old as 2 months, reappearing in chat as if they were just resent. We want to assure residents we believe this is a technical problem and not associated with anything intentional or malicious. We are investigating the cause and if you wish to send in a support ticket with your experience we will pass that information on to the investigative team.
