[Opensim-dev] Grid and Home Simulators concerns

[Laurent B.]

Hello,
 
I am resident on a francophone grid (http://francogrid.com <http://francogrid.com/> ) as a developer(c#,lsl), tester and blogger(http://lslblog.free.fr <http://lslblog.free.fr/> ), and I am hosting a simulator on a single home PC running windows XP, SQLServer Express. This simulator is connected to the FrancoGrid using a standard ADSL connection, and it will probably be the same for many other people in the future.
My brief experience of hosting a home simulator connected to a open grid already raises some of questions about envisioned OpenSim future to me and to the FrancoGrid owner:- Would OpenSim be able to host a large number of home hosted simulators?Here are some thoughts:* The bandwidth of ADSL connections is still very low, at least in our country... For the moment, the upload and download rates are usually differents by a factor of up to ten. Moreover, the connection quality is very different from one DSL provider to another one.=> Do you think that the weakness of this type of connection would compromises the development of such open grids? If yes, is the team planning to adapt code for large grids using home simulators? (for example by using a kind of P2P technology)=> Are there any recommandations and guidelines to optimize grid design? I think having a kind of Sequence Diagram showing servers interactions would help a lot.* On a "normal" grid that owns a sim farm in a datacenter, probably on a high speed LAN the same way as the Linden Grid probably works, a disconnected simulator is considered as an incident. This is not the case for a open grid which connects home simulators: their owners may have gone on holiday, or simply shut their PC down the evening because they do not have a dedicated machine to make it run.
=> Would this be an issue for the actual and the future OpenSim?
<A little bit out of topic now>
I helped a friend to install OpenSim at home using CrossLoop. She told me: "I love OpenSim, but it is not for everyone.". It's not easy to admit, but it's true : I remember the time when it was so quick and easy to setup a Quake III server to play on internet. The most difficult part was to open a port thru the firewall. People who finally understood what a router is, and how NAT works must now to understand they cannot host their sim because of "NAT loopback" issue.
 
=> Would OpenSim be more install friendly in the future? Could OpenViewer client includes server code to make it run as easily as a Quake III do? Is NAT loopback a definitive unsolvable issue for home hosters ?</ A little bit off topic now>
 
That's all for now. I know it's a lot of questions. Thank you everyone for your attention and for your hard work. I hope this discussion is not too far from your actual concerns.
Cheers,Laurent
 
(Grumly on # Opensim and Francogrid)
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