so we all know that internet speed is uber important for virtual worlds and i like using SpeedTest to see what mine is and to check up on my isp every now and then
ctrl shift 1
but speed is only half of it, well i don’t know if that is right, but just as important as speed is ping!
ping is how fast the round trip of a packet is. what’s a packet? err, i’m not sure but it’s data. when my avatar moves on my screen and bumps into something (what a klutz!) that data goes from me to the server back to me. that round trip time and “cleanliness” of that signal is really critical. when you are on a sim with a lot going on, you may lose some packets (you can see this with your stats – ctrl shift 1)
it’s not a big deal to lose some packets and pretty normal in laggy situations (that’s what lag is)
you can only do so much about ping time. buying faster and better quality broadband can certainly help but how can you measure the quality part? well with PingTest!
if you can get true fiber optic broadband that can give you a clean signal. even with the fastest speed you can have ping issues and vice versa
the next time you look at changing your isp, maybe run both SpeedTest and PingTest at other people’s homes that have different providers. time of day affects this as does traffic, so testing is best done on the same days at around the same time
what else can be done to help your ping?
server location! for things like Second Life and hosted OpenSpace, you can’t really control where the server is that you are hitting but if you install your own OpenSim (or have a third party do it) then you can control where the server is
the closer to you, the better (generally)
if you are a school or university, then your district’s server would be ideal. you could even install OpenSim on a very modestly priced box in your classroom or department (under $500 or maybe less, i don’t know that side of this very well but know of someone that set up OpenSim on a laptop and used a router to allow workshop peeps to hit his grid)
if you are having someone install OpenSim on a professional host, then having a host in your country might be ideal
so if you are in Australia, someone like SimHost would serve you well because they have servers in Australia (and Houston Texas too)
it may not seem like a big deal but the image below gives you a rough idea of how that ping time gets longer and longer the further away you get. you can see that for me, it would make a ten fold difference between something 100 miles away and a zillion miles away in the land down under (plus all my prims would be upside down i think) =p
and in that Oz example, other things are also affected – like VoIP – so if voice is critical, there’s yet another reason to know about this!
ping – something else to consider for doing your own grid or in choosing an internet provider
Wow some big differences here! Any idea how much of this you would see in world?
We are looking at buying a host/server for our project now and the main choices seem to be with using SimHost or even hosting it our self and buying a server to sit in the office.
The thing is we are in the UK, as we are just looking at offering the work to UK teenage cancer patients, our users will all be in the UK. So running our own server should lead to a good ping and 0% packet loss. Where as using SimHost, with out users in the UK, would we actually notice much difference there??? hmm…
P.s. I can explain packets to you anytime, I trained as a high school teacher, teaching ICT and Computing (and from that went to work for a charity instead) :p
Jonathan
8 Sep 10 at 3:43 am
well, the number of people you have on (i remember that you need high concurrency) and the complexity of the builds on the sims will have a larger affect than distance. ping is just one part of virtual worlds (and more important in say World of Warcraft where milliseconds are critical in attacks)
the best thing is to ask to try this out. for example, the welcome sim for OSGrid is hosted by SimHost but i don’t know where that box is located (ask James or Adam)
but you could get an idea of the effect by going to that sim
when i think of a laggy sim, i think of Second Life a few years ago and 40 to 50 people on it. and considering the demographics of Second Life, that means it is highly likely that there were Brasilians and Germans on that sim hitting a server in San Francisco (that was two years ago, now SL has servers in other parts of the US and will serve up the closest one to your IP)
a box of your own may be needed for your concurrency and the good news is that you may be able to hire someone like Justin Clark-Casey to do the install (he is in the UK but heavily booked)
i’d say talk to SimHost, their price point is untouchable for their 4 core and 8 gig of RAM option. i know that the machine we are on (Houston) has huge bandwidth and that helps lessen the ping effect with a larger number of people
see if you can get some people to do a load test and go to different OSGrid locations. the nice thing about OSGrid is that it is made up of regions from all around the world
http://www.3dhosting.de/ is a German group and may be an option too
ping is important but must be weighed with your budget and needs. in your case, your high concurrency needs may require additional RAM or perhaps even the option you suggested of your own box
Ener Hax
8 Sep 10 at 7:17 am
Nice post Ener. Very nice framing of how you look at issues. From a science point of view, ping has a role in how smoothly a virtual world runs but is also just one of dozens of factors affecting performance.
How much of an impact that makes in various use cases is difficult to guess. The longer that information stays in the “pipeline” and the more of it that you have, the greater the lag will be. If users are simply chatting or doing basic building, that will have less of an impact than if everyone is scripting.
I have been to music events in Second Life with 55 users and experienced very little lag (I believe there were 50-56 people at your SL going away party). Keep in mind that a Second Life sim is only running on one CPU core and I believe 1 GB RAM. What we have from SimHost should help make up for even the longest ping time in your post.
Jonathan, I would not hesitate recommending SimHost. As far as hosting companies go they offer they best hardware value and, more importantly, expertise from the people that develop OpenSim and run the largest grid of OpenSim instances.
David Miller
8 Sep 10 at 8:52 am
Jonathan, did you get my email with contact info for James? he won’t steer you wrong and is not a salesman, just very passionate (and capable) about all things OpenSim
thanks subQ! ping is a factor – how much of one depends on many things, but it is something that you “can” have some degree of control over =)
Ener Hax
8 Sep 10 at 3:26 pm
Ener, yes thanks =)
I emailed him that day, and he got back to me the next day (think that was only due to the time differences). Very helpful and so far that is looking the best option, that the one I am putting forward to board of trustees of the charity.
Jonathan
9 Sep 10 at 3:36 am
\o/ Jonathan! let me know if i can be of any assistance with your proposal. i am sure you have a very good handle on this. the creative outlet alone is wonderful for the health of anyone (i believe we are intended to express our creativity while on this Earth)
best of luck =)
Ener Hax
9 Sep 10 at 8:51 am
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