HOME / TECHNICAL ISSUES / LAG / LATENCY
Question: I've got bad lag. By that, I mean my avatar won't start walking until a long time after I press forward; OR my avatar won't stop walking after I've let go of forward; OR my chat takes a long time to appear after I finish typing and press Enter. What's wrong?
Answer:
This type of "lag" is actually the conventional definition of lag: latency between you and the Second Life servers. That is, information is taking a long time to get from your computer to Second Life, or vice-versa.
First, make sure you're on a broadband connection, meaning DSL, Cable, or an corporate office or university network. Dial-up doesn't work with Second Life, and satellite and any other type of internet connection that isn't DSL or Cable (even if it claims to be broadband) doesn't work well with Second Life (PRI ISDN, E1 and T1 service are notable exceptions, but few people have these, as they're very expensive). BRI (128k) ISDN does work, albeit not especially well - expect lots of this kind of lag.
If you're using wireless networking, you should try troubleshooting with a direct wired connection.
You might open the Statistics window and see what your Ping User, Ping Sim, and Packet Loss values are. The ping values are the time (in milliseconds) it takes to reach your computer from the server, and the server from your computer, respectively. If one or both of these numbers is high, it could indicate a problem with your network or internet connection. If Packet Loss is a non-zero number, your network or ISP may be having issues.
Finally, the region you're in may be busy or overloaded. Try to see if going somewhere else reduces the problem.