[sldev] Cache politics: performance vs obfuscation
Tateru Nino
tateru.nino at gmail.com
Tue Jun 10 23:47:03 PDT 2008
Loom wrote:
>
> On 11/06/2008, *Matthew Underwood* <sakkaku at gmail.com
> <mailto:sakkaku at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:55 PM, Loom <loom at loomiverse.net
> <mailto:loom at loomiverse.net>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 11/06/2008, Ann Otoole <missannotoole at yahoo.com
> <mailto:missannotoole at yahoo.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Let us ensure we have the priorities straight.
> >> With Time Warner and other cable modem service providers
> preparing to
> >> implement bytes transferred caps it is imperative that the
> cache operation
> >> overall be improved to ensure there is no repetitive
> downloading of bytes.
> >>
> >> It simply will not matter if the bytes are obfuscated if the
> population of
> >> Secondlife is gutted by a large scale *perceived inability* to
> afford to
> >> participate.
> >>
> >> Save SL first. Then worry about the rest.
> >> If SL dies because of consumers *not being aware of their
> choices in
> >> service providers* then nothing really matters does it?
> >
> > I realise that you have used the word "perceived" in there but I
> would like
> > to suggest that usage caps are not going to kill secondlife.
> >
> > Personally, I don't agree with the idea of usage caps, however
> in Australia
> > we have lived with them for quite a while.
> >
> > From the march 2008 economic stats, there were 12,245 active
> Australian
> > users or about 0.057% of the population, who clocked up an
> average of 47
> > hours each - using usage capped internet connections.
> >
> > Compare that with the US where 194,899 active users (0.064% of the
> > population) clocked up an average of 59 hours each.
> >
> > At worst, SL may take a hit in usage, but suggesting that it
> will die is
> > imho an extreme view which is more in the line of fearmongering than
> > rational analysis.
> >
> > Loom
>
>
> The idea is to plan ahead to avoid running full on into a wall. There
> is no point in bickering over weather or not people are able to play
> SL, it is to realize that people ARE capped and MAY be impaired by SL.
> Why not improve the caching such that the asset servers are hammered
> less, people have to use less bandwidth and therefor have a more
> enjoyable experience.
>
> No argument there, I'm simply point out that an "OMG usage caps will
> kill SL" attitude is not necessarliy a reasonable stance to take.
>
> A simple and I believe strong argument for both better cache and
> texture decoding code is that it has to be faster than downloading an
> asset from somewhere else on the internet every single time it is
> needed. The fatser the code, the better the SL experience for anyone.
> In a sense, the paranoia about caps being introduced in the US will
> potentially make SL better for everyone if it means that cache
> performance is improved.
>
Caps would certainly cause each user to reevaluate how they spend their
network traffic, in what proportion and how often.
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