[sldev] Question: Replacing current group chat with XMPP?

[Dahlia Trimble]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM, David M Chess <chess at us.ibm.com> wrote:

>
> > From: "Dahlia Trimble" <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>
>
> >I'm not sure of the relevance to this discussion, but I've often been
> >intrigued by some of the user numbers I see on IRC networks. Here's a
> quick
> >sample taken a moment ago from freenode:
> >
> >Total channels:5197
> >Top 3 channels by *currently logged in* users:
> >#ubuntu      1362
> >#gentoo       933
> >#debian       819
> >
> >What does this mean, other than freenode is dominated by geeks? It could
> >mean that they have solved some of the scalability problems with the IRC
> >model and it can serve as a reference.
>
>
> If I'm understanding what Zero said correctly, the problem with IRC scaling
> to SL levels wasn't the number of people concurrently logged into a group so
> much as it was the number of groups that each person was concurrently logged
> into.  And I think that's a rather fundamental difference between the
> use-cases: I believe the average IRC user is only in a few channels at a
> time (heavy IRC users are invited to comment on that!), whereas in the SL
> model one is currently in like 25 at a time, and even when we fix things so
> that groups that don't need chat channels don't have them, we'll also be
> raising the 25-group limit, so I expect that 25-at-once will continue to be
> pretty typical.



I don't know if the IRC model is applicable to SL, but from my experience as
a somewhat heavy IRC user, I just dont see any of the group chat problems
that SL sees and I haven't seen any evidence that the SL *logged in* user
and message volume is greater, if anything I would believe the IRC volume is
much higher.

>From what little I know of IRC architecture, each server can serve a limited
amount of users and also forwards messages to other servers in a star
configuration. I'm having a hard time envisioning a system that could scale
better than that by just throwing hardware at it as seems possible with the
IRC model. I imagine that each server could give a higher priority to
forwarding messages to other servers if system loads were to peak.

There may be other reasons why the IRC model is inadequate for SL type
messaging, but I just can't find any evidence to support the scalability or
volume arguments.


> (And suggesting that SL residents just change their habits so that they
> *aren't* listening for anything that anyone might say in an of 25 group
> channels is a non-starter for me.  Seems like a perfectly plausible way to
> use the system, it's the way that *I* want to use the system, and I don't
> want to say that the users have to change because we aren't smart enough to
> find a way to meet their expectations.)


I'm usually at my 25 group peak and I just don't see high message volumes,
even though I am suscribed to several of the high-membership groups you
listed earlier in the thread.

>
>
> >I'd love to see an IRC client built into the viewer. Currently I can use a
> >web based irc client inside the viewer's browser window, but it takes far
> >more screen real estate than it needs. Then again, the communicate window
> >also takes far more screen real estate than it needs :(
>
>
> I hope that's slightly tongue-in-cheek.  :)  Or else people are going to
> start advocating for email / AIM / WoW clients built into the viewer, too,
> for the same reasons.  :)
>

I wish it was tongue-in-cheek, but I am a heavy IRC user and so far it's the
only way I can reliably communicate with others when SL's system fails, or
if I want to message people on other grids.


>
>
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