SL-ice.net

Secondlife has experienced tremendous growth recently. One of the main issues is concurrent use - it peaked at 34,000 residents online sometime in February.

When the number of concurrent users is above 30,000, all of SL becomes very slow. I personally login at odd times when I need to get some work done or return things to people (to avoid loss of their items).

Today, Linden Lab announced that it may restrict logins to “Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab” during peak times. Here is a quote from the blog:

“When you open your log-in screen and see in the upper right hand corner Grid Status: Restricted, you’ll know that only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in. Residents who are in Second Life when this occurs will only be affected if they log-out and want to return before the grid returns to normal status.”

While it may seem extreme, it is a necessary measure. I think that this move may limit growth but will improve the overall experience for most users. The growth limiting aspect will occur when the grid needs to be restricted more often as peaks in concurrent logins occur more frequently.

On the positive side, the First Look viewer looks very promising since it makes SL feel very quick and smooth (it is choppy at times these days). I have heard that the First Look viewer is also a little less resource intensive on SL’s servers – keep up the great work LL