Maxping reporter toughs it out in the Maldives to examine if 3D web is realistic in regions with challenging network conditions.
As we talk about the technology behind opensim & realXtend
to be by chance the Apache of 3D web - and having made
some experiences in heterogeneous setups with osgrid:
what about the reach of the new medium ? Will countries
on the edge of the multi-dimensional spiders web be able to take
part ..?
To answer this significant question, I emptied the fluff out of
the Maxping expenses jar* and hopped on a plane to Ziyaarafushi which is part of the
Maldives - a small island lurking in the Indian Ocean.
(*sorry guys, no more biscuits for the next 324 years )
The island has very typical infrastructure for
the Maldives, and for many 2nd world countries that have
large areas to cover with spots of
some dozen to some hundred people living at a specific
place. They have VDSL on the island (running on 10 year old copper
wires) that is concentrated at the PBX of the island, and operated
by the local resort. Guests at the resort have a
DSL-modem & Router in the room - some resorts offer wireless
LAN, but still use the same technical foundation to get out to the
world.
The island is connected via microwave point2point radio to the
main island Male. The Telco of the maledives has two underwater cable
links. One to India, one to Sri Lanka.
For these tests I chose the wired way to avoid problems due to
wireless.
Maxpings...!
My server is located in Germany:
->Ralf Haifisch
Ping:
Antwort von 85.25.176.149: Bytes=32 Zeit=339ms TTL=55
Antwort von 85.25.176.149: Bytes=32 Zeit=323ms TTL=55
Antwort von 85.25.176.149: Bytes=32 Zeit=321ms TTL=55
Antwort von 85.25.176.149: Bytes=32 Zeit=322ms TTL=55
Ping-Statistik für 85.25.176.149:
Pakete: Gesendet = 4, Empfangen = 4, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 321ms, Maximum = 339ms, Mittelwert = 326ms
The osgrid.org server is located in New York.
-> Osgrid
Ping:
Antwort von 4.71.184.27: Bytes=32 Zeit=315ms TTL=53
Antwort von 4.71.184.27: Bytes=32 Zeit=1967ms TTL=53
Antwort von 4.71.184.27: Bytes=32 Zeit=314ms TTL=53
Antwort von 4.71.184.27: Bytes=32 Zeit=313ms TTL=53
Ping-Statistik für 4.71.184.27:
Pakete: Gesendet = 4, Empfangen = 4, Verloren = 0
(0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 313ms, Maximum = 1967ms, Mittelwert = 727ms
Usage test:
I did try Second Life and Osgrid (Opensim-Grid). In both worlds
login, time to display my environment, rezzing + deleting new
prims and IM (Textchat) have been tested.
All went surprisingly well. I did had 2 crashes
with Second Life, however. Nothing was stated on the status info
page - so it is maybe bad luck, maybe less tolerance to high
roundtrip times.
Osgrid worked almost like a charm.
Conclusion:
While we can't do anything about the speed of light and the
roundtrips are not the fastest - the bandwidth and reliability is
really nice.
For personal experience (subjective), opensim even
performs better (Osgrid) than Second Life.
I would not propose to run server at the Maldives, but using the
viewer is fine - so a business could rent a hosting space on the
continent and it should work out fine.
PS: Believe me, it was fun to write this article - but to me
it´s really important to see wether this new
emerging 3D web will work from most places we use 2D now.
We recommend that you discuss this article on Think, but if you really want to you can leave a comment right here as well: