PostHeaderIcon Linden Lab Serious About Scalability?

Apparently so.

And it's about time. It all comes down to the asset servers. Those are the life-blood of Second Life and all things virtual world.

I am an experienced I.T. guy, but I don't even pretend to know exactly how Second Life is set-up and configured and all the intricate little details. However, based on my own experience with Computer Three-Dimensional Art and and back-end Information technology systems, etc., the basic paradigm should be pretty straight-forward.

First, geometry instructions are stored on a computer. These are either ASCII (text) files or descriptions (much like the way Poser files are all text-based) or binary files. Basically, this information is passed to your client software, also known as the Second Life 'viewer'. Then that client software, and your computer take that information and use it to calculate what the object would be shaped like in three dimensions, then calculate the perspective raitio based on the angle you are viewing it from. The same with textures and how they would look 'painted' on the object and so on.

Well, these descriptions are counted in the billions. And there must be some kind of indexing system. In the Xenix/Unix/Linux kind of systems, and later beginning with Windows NT and the much-hated "registry", there has been a long, cryptic code used to identify these digital assets, known as a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID).

Well, this index is constantly working to fill agent requests. Everything in Second Life has a UUID. Even you. What you know as your "Avatar Key" is really just a UUID. So everytime to see something, see another person, look at a profile, rez something on the floor... the asset servers are accessed for the UUID, so your viewer knows just what it is it is suppoed to draw for you. 30-times a secnd, preferably.

Now i repeat: I am not intimately familiar with the Linden Research "Grid Technology" and its protocols and configuration and all that. But, it seems to me that if Linden Lab wants to make Second Life or, at least the "Second Life Grid" to become a standardized platform for some new 3-D web, they need to make the technology far more scalable than it is right now.

The Asset Servers will (and pretty much do) act a lot like the Domain Name System (DNS) currently employed on the World Wide Web. The DNS is what translates a name or words into numbers. All computers on the Internet are sitting at an Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is simply a series of four sets of three-digit numbers, each ranging from zero to 255. When you enter the words "secondlife.com" into your browsers address bar, the DNS system converts that to the appropriate numerical address, which looks something like "192.168.0.1".

If you think about it, the Asset Servers used in the Second Life Grid technology basically do the same thing. The problem is that the Asset Servers are serving everything. Right now, the DNS system simply redirects you to the appropriate computer on the Internet and the server does all the work from there. It delivers the web page and the web pages tells your browser where to find any pictures, or sounds or video and so on.

Once you are passed off to the web server, the DNS system rarely interracts with you untill you need to be pointed to another address. So, it's sleek and hums right along.

However, imagine the DNS system handling everything.

It points you to the appropriate machine, the appropriate web page file, each and every image location on that server that happens to be in the page, all the videos, all the sounds... everything. And while it's doing all of this for you, it's doing all of this for everyone else as well. I suspect the Worldewide Web would simply break. All of it comes to a screaching stand-still.

Well the good news is that "M" and company have decided to bring someone on board with America Online experience. The purpose of this individual is to consider The Grid stability. Hopefully, sometime withing 10 or 15-years, Second Life will actually run a lot like the Worldwide Web in terms of stability. Of course, it is unlikely we will be able to get a lot more than 40 to 60 avatars into a host (simulator; region; estate) at the same time because unlike web pages that are quickly downloaded to your local machine and then you are actually browsing 'off-line', Second Life is a continuous-live connection and constantly updated. For you and everyone else.

So, for hopefully good news that will eventually be coming down the pike, take a look at the original story about Frank Ambrose becoming a Linden:
Linden Lab Appoints Frank Ambrose as Senior VP of Global Technology
SAN FRANCISCO - (Business Wire) Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced the appointment of Frank Ambrose as Senior VP of Global Technology. Ambrose has 20 years of experience in technology infrastructure development, data architecture and operations, including his most recent role as AOL's Senior Vice President of Technology for Infrastructure and Network Services. Reporting to Linden Lab's CEO, Mark Kingdon, Ambrose will oversee the development of new processes, systems and tools to maximize the scalability of Second Life's network architecture.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Blackthorne™ ≠ inSL

Search This Blog

SL Grid Status

Mundane History