[sldev] Client bandwidth and server lag

[Colin Kern]

Hi everyone,

There's this idea that seems pretty much ubiquitous in SL now, which
is that everyone can help reduce sim lag by not setting their maximum
bandwidth about 500 kbps.  I want to get everyone's reaction to this,
because to me it sounds like a myth.

I think the logic that people are following is that since you're not
downloading the textures as fast from the server, it puts a lower load
on it.  But you still have to download the same amount of data, and
does it really make that much of a difference if you do it in 5
seconds instead of 20?  I could maybe understand lag being more
"bursty" with higher bandwidths, but it seems like if you have a
fairly busy sim where avatars are teleporting in or moving around
frequently, having lower bandwidth settings increases the chances of
your download overlapping with someone else's, so the overall load on
the server evens out.  Also, it seems like it would be trivial to have
the servers monitor and throttle their download requests to prevent
getting overloaded from client texture requests.

What are all your thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Colin Kern