[slscripters] Where do I find IM traffic limits?

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

A communication product I make apparently exceeded the IM limits on a
customer's location.
The Lindens shut down all IMs on his land for an hour.
I certainly want to avoid this problem but have no idea where to find
out what those limits are.
I could not find anything in the LSL Portal.
Any idea on what those limits are and how they are applied?

AnnMarie Otoole
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[David Simmons]

Might be a new limit or since IM turns into email for offline use the email limit may kickin. Also the email limit may be imposed on the receiving end also.

--
"We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.google.com/profiles/techiedavid

[Andromeda Quonset]

This is the first I've heard of anything like this associated with
the IM functions.

I make a comm product that I have not yet finished, hence it isn't
released, and while it doesn't currently make much use of IM's, it
would be good to know about associated limits, and any other
limits. And whether or not any limits are controlled at the LL-end
i.e. the ability for Linden's to shut-down IM's based on
_anything_ on this any other functions. Perhaps all odd-numbered
sims can have llSetPos disabled for an hour at noon on every Tuesday
if there is an "r" in the month.

That is basically also my own way of saying that while LL may think
they had a valid reason for shutting down IM's at someone's location,
I think it is unconscionable.
Andro

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

Thanks David.  That's a good thought but all IM recipients were in the sim within the last 10 seconds so the number sent to email would be negligible. 

The source of the IMs is limited by the 2 second delay in an IM.  At the suggestion in the LSL Portal, I have multiple linked prims to overcome this limit but apparently there is some other undocumented limit.

[Damet]

Did it happen more than once and if not , you sure it just wasn't a sim issue not that there is ever a sim issue in secondlife :)

_______________________________________________

[Fred Beckhusen]

There is some old docs around in the Sl mailing list asking this same
question. There is also a bit of info indicating 5,000 an hour, but
other people have noted that that causes a server limit to trip in, too.

Ferd Frederix

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

Here is the message he received from Lindens.  I'm not sure if it was computer generated or manual intervention. It has only happened once and I told him to shut it down while I investigate.  I've sold about 25 of these over 6 months and no problems in the past.  Apparently they shut down IMs from all objects he owned and from his avatar too.

[14:18] Second Life: Objects you own in xxxxxxxxxx  have sent out excessive messages and their messages have been temporarily deactivated.  The last message sent was from 'yyyyyyy Resident:'. You should check on your objects in this region.

He then said about my product:-
[15:02]  it turned off my ability for others to see my IM's - I sent 5 to you before you got it
[15:02]  it: turned off my vendors in my shops
[15:03]  it: stopped everything of mine that talks to me on my sim
[15:03]  I had to contact Live Chat
[15:03]  and they said to wait until the temporary deactivation opened up again

If I can find out what the limits are, I can take measures to avoid this.

AnnMarie

[David Simmons]

Here is the official link: 5000 per hour is the limit. (Almost at the end of the article)

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Instant-messages/ta-p/700089

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:00 PM, AnnM...@SLFBI.com <AnnM...@slfbi.com> wrote:

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

Wow, thank you David.  I wonder if that is a rolling count or restarted on the hour.

Hmm, there IS a way round that but I Hate to do it with a capital H.

AnnMarie

[Stickman]

> Wow, thank you David.  I wonder if that is a rolling count or restarted on
> the hour.
>
> Hmm, there IS a way round that but I Hate to do it with a capital H.

The actual quote is "The number of IMs an object can send in one hour is 5000."

If the wording is correct, that means you can get around it by making
sure that no single object/linkset sends more than 5000 IMs in one
hour. It also sounds like the penalty for doing this is having ALL IMs
by that user (including the avatar itself) shut down, which may not be
the intentional consequence if it's a per-object limitation.

Something to ask at the server or scripting office hours, most likely.

I've updated the SL wiki Limits page to include this 5000 IMs per
object per hour limitation.
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

If anyone finds further clarification on this, I'm sure all of us on
the list would love to hear it.

Thanks,

Stickman

[Nexii Malthus]

That's about 83 IMs being sent every minute. I'm very curious, what's the purpose and architecture of the object that causes such an extreme output?

- Nexii

[Andromeda Quonset]

I was sorta wondering the same thing myself :)

(forgive my previous outburst....been starring at a dll for far too long)

 -Andro

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

It is more than a CAP on IMs, it is a CAP with SEVERE PENALTIES that
should be documented in the LSL Portal.

The messages come in a Poisson distribution which means they can come in
large groups with quiet times between. I can count the number sent and
reset the count every hour but if the Linden's "hour" is offset from
mine by half an hour, for example, then my two peaks could be separated
by a restart but the Linen's count could include both. I need to
synchronize or at least know if it is a running total (FIFO).

On 9/13/2011 5:34 AM, Stickman wrote:
> The actual quote is "The number of IMs an object can send in one hour is 5000."
>
> If the wording is correct, that means you can get around it by making
> sure that no single object/linkset sends more than 5000 IMs in one
> hour. It also sounds like the penalty for doing this is having ALL IMs
> by that user (including the avatar itself) shut down, which may not be
> the intentional consequence if it's a per-object limitation.
>
> Something to ask at the server or scripting office hours, most likely.
>
> I've updated the SL wiki Limits page to include this 5000 IMs per
> object per hour limitation.
> https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits
>
> If anyone finds further clarification on this, I'm sure all of us on
> the list would love to hear it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stickman

On 9/13/2011 5:54 AM, Nexii Malthus wrote:
> That's about 83 IMs being sent every minute. I'm very curious, what's
> the purpose and architecture of the object that causes such an extreme
> output?
>

I t is rare that I exceed the limit. I've sold about 25 of these
objects over 6 months and this is the first time it has happened. I
didn't even know there was a cap WITH PENALTIES. The product is a chat
extender so anyone (up to 40) in the area can "talk" to anyone else in
the area up to 75m square without shouting and with no echoes or
duplicates. The fact that the chat is being relayed can only be
detected by the color of the text. At the suggestion in the LSL Portal
I have 40 child prims to avoid the 2 second delay problem but they all
count as one object for the 5000 count.

Once I find out how the limit is set, I can filter the transmissions
using distance between speaker and listener to set a priority and drop
the messages with the longest distance.

AnnMarie Otoole

[Ann Otoole]

I had a modeling pose ball in the public photo garden that malfunctioned from time to time and whoever unluckily had used it last got spammed with messages and it would trigger the shutdown of messages in the sim. Took a while to figure out which one out of over 100 that was the malfunctioning object so I could delete it. There was no pattern to it. Sometimes it just barfed endlessly till it was reset. Most annoying.

---

From: Nexii Malthus <nex...@gmail.com>
To: Stickman <stic...@gmail.com>
Cc: SL Scripters <secondlif...@lists.secondlife.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: [slscripters] Where do I find IM traffic limits?

[Fred Allandale]

I did some experimenting a while back with IM sending rate caps and
discovered that not only does the 5000 IMs per hour limit apply, but there
is also a shorter term burst rate that will trip the same alarm. So you
can't get around the problem by loading up the object with a bunch of IM
sending scripts and send out 4999 IMs in 10 minutes. I was never able to
find any information on the short term burst rate limit or determine what it
is by experimenting. I do know that having an object send IMs at 10 per
second will trip the alarm in less than one minute. Also, the limits appear
to apply to the total IMs sent from all the owner's objects within the
region, not per object (the error message says "objects" - plural). In a
product that I sell, I limit the object IM send rate to 1 per second and
have only had a few occurrences, and I think they were caused by multiple
objects sending IMs at the same time. I would love to have it send faster
(and so would my customers), but because the limits are not published, there
is not a safe way to maximize the send rate while minimizing the the chances
of tripping the alarm and shutting down all objects for that owner in the
same sim. I was once told the limits are not published so as not to tip off
griefers, but it also limits the usefulness of legitimate products.

[Ronnie Tomorrow]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:33:40 -0600 Fred Allandale
<Fred_Al...@msn.com> wrote:

> I was once told the limits are not published so as not to tip off
> griefers, but it also limits the usefulness of legitimate products.

But I'm concerned that four or five objects, from different owners,
pumping out 5000 IMs an hour are going to increase lag substantially
and limitthe usefulness of other legitimate products,

--
Ronnie Tomorrow
Tomorrow's Art Today
Store Unit 04 - East River Community
Helvellyn (26, 198, 30), Second Life

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

Ah yes, I have to agree, Fred. It is inconceivable that I sent out
5,000 IMs but burst rate could get up to a theoretical absolute maximum
of 40 per second followed by 2 seconds silent or an average of 20 per
second. It should not be hard to set up some tests and see what it
takes to trip the alarm. I will do that and publish the results. Once
I know the limits it won't be difficult to put in a safety valve.

So the penalty in addition to capping, is to lock out all IMs from
objects owned by the perpetrator for an hour. That suggests that
objects like this should be "owned" by an alt. That way you don't risk
shutting down all your vendors and other items if you trip the alarm.
Or do they recognize the alt and penalize the owner's owner too. I
guess I'll find that out too with my tests.

Yes it appears to be an anti-griefing motive for having a 1 hour cap on
all objects when a cap on the offending object should be sufficient.

AnnMarie Otoole

[Kelly Linden]

The effective throttle rate is 5000 per hour. The logic is the same as most of our throttles, a rough sliding window.

Actual implementation details:
* The throttle is on all IMs from the object owner. It does not disable all IMs in the region, but does disable all IMs from the owner of the object.
* The throttle is not per object, but per owner. Splitting the spamming object into multiple objects will not help unless owned by different people. This also means that owning multiple almost too spammy objects will cause you to hit the limit.
* 2500 IMs in 30 minutes will trigger the block.
* IMs that are blocked continue to count against the throttle. The IM count must drop below 2500 before any IMs will be delivered.
* The IM count of the previous window is used to approximate the rolling window. If it is 20% into the current window the IM count will be the current count + 80% of the previous count. This allows us to approximate a rolling average, however it has the behavior that a flood of IMs can have an effect on the throttle for double the window length. This is why in practice the throttle behaves more like 5k in 1hr than 2.5k in 30min.

Caveats:
* There was a bug that is fixed in the today's release and will be fixed on all regions by the end of the week. This bug used the same throttle for IMs from objects as IMs from residents. So if you had a spammy object that hit the throttle you couldn't even send IMs from your viewer in that region. This is fixed on the release channel today and all regions by the end of the week. With this fix IMs from viewers have their own bucket and won't be blocked because of spammy objects, and visa versa.

Why the limit?
* Flooding IMs can be detrimental to the system and cause undue load on the region and back end servers. In severe cases this can lead to region crashes, viewer crashes and inventory/content loss. The throttle is in place to prevent this.

 - Kelly

[Stickman]

> * 2500 IMs in 30 minutes will trigger the block.
> * IMs that are blocked continue to count against the throttle. The IM count
> must drop below 2500 before any IMs will be delivered.
> * The IM count of the previous window is used to approximate the rolling
> window. If it is 20% into the current window the IM count will be the
> current count + 80% of the previous count. This allows us to approximate a
> rolling average, however it has the behavior that a flood of IMs can have an
> effect on the throttle for double the window length. This is why in practice
> the throttle behaves more like 5k in 1hr than 2.5k in 30min.
>
> Caveats:
> * There was a bug

> if you had a spammy object that hit
> the throttle you couldn't even send IMs from your viewer in that region.

Thank you for the clarifications, Kelly. It's good to know how it works.

Stickman

[Nexii Malthus]

@Chat Extender, I recommend an upgrade to llRegionSayTo which has been with us for a good time now. ( https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlRegionSayTo )

@Kelly Linden, a few quick questions,

* Are those IM limits intended to throttle IMs sent out of sim?

* Can those limits be lifted for internal IMs?

* Or are those limits also applied to other types of messages, like llOwnerSay / llSay / llShout / llRegionSay / llRegionSayTo?

- Nexii

[AnnM...@slfbi.com]

Thanks Nexii, I had completely forgotten about llRegionSayTo. It
"should" be much more resource efficient.
So, yes Kelly, are there caps on these?

AnnMarie

On 9/14/2011 8:24 AM, Nexii Malthus wrote:
@Chat Extender, I recommend an upgrade to llRegionSayTo which has been
with us for a good time now. (
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlRegionSayTo )

@Kelly Linden, a few quick questions,
* Are those IM limits intended to throttle IMs sent out of sim?
* Can those limits be lifted for internal IMs?
* Or are those limits also applied to other types of messages, like
llOwnerSay / llSay / llShout / llRegionSay / llRegionSayTo?

- Nexii

[Kelly Linden]

I don't see any immediately visible caps on llRegionSayTo.

* The IM limits are intended to throttle all IMs. Even local IMs have load that we care about and need to be throttled. These limits are not applied to llOwnerSay / llSay / llShout / llRegionSay / llRegionSayTo.

 - Kelly

[Ray Silent]

Thank you for clarifying it, Kelly.

[Sasun Steinbeck]

I have often wondered if this limit is different on homestead sims, is the throttle the same regardless of homestead vs. full sim?