Just recently the parcel that I am security staff for has encountered massive performance issues. We have been at our wit’s end trying to eradicate the problem and Linden lab, in the persons of Whitney and Lilian Linden have visited the parcel, on Wirtz sim, to try to pin down the root cause. So far we have been unsuccessful. However, after reading a couple of posts in the Server Thread of the SL Technology Forum….
“I have at last found a sensible reason for the recent dire performance of the Street Whores parcel, or rather the Wirtz region.
The base cause is, as we suspected all along, our super-high script load, but that sort of goes with the territory!
However the recent appearance on a neighbouring region of an “AFK sex” parcel with a large number of avatars present but AFK, has resulted in a large increase in child agents for our parcel.
LL Defines a child agent as follows:
“The number of agents who are not on this simulator, but can see it.”
For whatever reason, recent software changes in the new Server Versions rolled out have radically increased the effect that “child agents” can have on a region’s performance. Also as the simulators have been given more and more work to do as things like animesh and materials came along so script load has become more critical.
The upshot of all this has been the dreadful simulator performance over recent weeks. When restarted, it seems the some servers have been less able to cope with the load than others, hence the apparent improvements, which have all been quite short-lived.
The solution to all this is yet to be decided upon.”
“Now if your region or parcel is on Mainland, there may be up to 9 regions around you, if you include those at the corners, so there are many places where avatars “might” be able to see your region. That will result in a heavy potential child-agent load on your region’s simulator! That, I suspect is our problem.”
And so it goes. The above text was in a notecard circulated to my colleagues in the Managers’ Group for the parcel, but as you will see it is a problem that bedevils many parcels on Mainland (and not only Adult Mainland Zindra, I should point out!). It is, I assume, a consequence of changes in some aspect of the simulator code in recent times but a solution, short of a major script cull, eludes me.
ETA 00:45am GMT 8th Nov: Today’s rolling restarts were a strange affair on LeTigre, since the initial roll was replaced by the code scheduled for Magnum regions, most places getting two restarts as a result. For the moment the Wirtz sim is performing much better. We’ll see how long that lasts!
FETA 7:00pm GMT 11th Nov: So far, so good. Wirtz sim appears to be performing acceptably still. As to the reason, goodness knows!
Ayesha Askham-Ezvalt