MIT’s Technology Review reports on VastPark’s efforts to deal with ‘sudden crowds’ that appear in virtual world environments.
Overloading a sim is no surprise to users of Second Life, but even game environments “shard” their environments to handle upper limits of users. With other places, the overload is spread across different servers, but with VWs, this should not be allowed to happen because, as the articles states, “friends need to be kept together, so that they can interact.”
VastPark, is intending to use P2P networks to handle the overload. Basically, the app. means that a company using this setup will have to invest less in back-end infrastructure, according to the article.
“While the company can still run a central server that distributes client software and contains information about 3-D content, peer-to-peer networks can handle information about avatar position and character interaction.”
It also means that using the P2P network allows for the ability to scale up to an unlimited number of users.
The article also notes that Linden Labs, which has made moves to opening up its system, could compete with the P2P idea by letting individuals host their own SL servers.
VastPark had a booth at the recent Virtual Worlds 2008 and is currently ‘stress testing’ its applications.
Is this wise at a moment when many (most?) ISP’s throttle traffic on P2P networks and when European ISP’s are being warned they may be held responsible for content distributed via P2P networks?
Wouldn’t they be tiptoeing thru’ something of a technical and legal minefield?
Hi, Eris, I don’t think P2P, in itself, is legally questionable; using a peer to peer network like bittorrent to share copyrighted material without consent certainly is.
I think it’s sweetly naive to think a virtual world like SL could be implemented using P2P because it assumes that, um, basically, its residents are all upstanding human beings who won’t use knowledge of their neighbour’s IP addresses to wreak havoc. I shudder to think on it! The problem could be got around with proxies but is it fair to call a network “peer to peer” when no two peers are ever directly connected to each other? I don’t see how a distributed “avatar position” network translates to unlimited scale when all other content (including comms) remains centrally sourced.
Icha