DISQUS

How interesting, only the other day I was lamenting on the poor response time from Australia to the Second Life servers in the USA. The problem of anything interactive gets quite bad if the time between visualization and response gets too long. It seems I am quite lucky to get ping times below 400ms, and I understand even on good connections it is still in the 300ms range for the round trip to the USA. This is even worse when interaction with another entity because their reaction time is added to the equation.

What an interesting thought to have SL servers here in Oz so at least some regions would be more attractive to us down under. Given the interest and commitment that Telstra seems to have shown in SL they would be in an ideal position to host at least some of this exercise. They pursue value added services to their base internet service in a number of ways and have already adopted un-metered connectivity to SL surely the next step to make their “in world pond” regions even more attractive to tempt new customers and commercial interests would be the extension of running at least a few servers locally. The mix of local servers together with a responsive network must be a winner, adding value to the generally more expensive service they would like us to use.

Unless something along the lines of local servers are adopted, virtual worlds will always have a problem and will be restricted in acceptance and application.

Tanya