Yesterday, some discussion sprang up on the metered vs unmetered status of Second Life bandwidth to Big Pond users. Telstra/BigPond is Australia's largest ISP, and for a variety of largely historical and political reasons, bandwidth in Australia is metered - essentially charged by the number of bytes received (this is the case in more countries than not). That makes any site or service that is unmetered unbearably attractive to local Internet users.
Due to some confusion with conflicting statements on the Big Pond website about what is and is not metered bandwith insofar as Second Life is concerned, we contacted the Big Pond staff to get a definitive answer, and got one quite promptly.
ThreeD Raymaker, site manager for The Pond in Second Life gave us the definitive answer from the FAQ and affirms that it is correct:
What's unmetered in Second Life?
As long as you're a BigPond Broadband ADSL, Cable or Wireless member on any plan other than an hourly plan, you can enjoy unmetered access to certain parts of Second Life.
Visiting most islands (but not all of them)
You can spend time on any of BigPond's Second Life islands (The Pond, Ponderosa, Billabong, Pondex, Pondessa, Ponderama, Ponden, Pondfield, Pondice, Pondillion and Pondshen) – browsing, chatting, looking around and attending events.
However, there are thousands more islands in Second Life. Many of those are unmetered too – but new islands are being added all the time so we can't guarantee that visiting other islands won't affect your monthly usage total.
Video and audio on BigPond islands
Any audio or video that you enjoy on BigPond's islands will be originating from BigPond's own servers, so we're able to make that unmetered too.
However, be aware that music and media on any other Second Life islands and even on BigPond's own residential and commercial tenants' land does not originate from BigPond, will therefore almost certainly be metered and count towards your monthly usage total.
Also, please note that the voice services within Second Life are not originated from BigPond's servers, so the use of voice communications will almost certainly be metered too, and count towards your monthly usage total.
Raymaker added,"BigPond unmeters all known IP address ranges owned by Linden Lab, but Linden Lab tends to add new IP address ranges without notifying us, so we can only do our best."
A couple of BigPond's webpages say otherwise but Raymaker assures us, "Currently the FAQ is correct in all respects. Music, Media, and Voice are all metered, with the exception of today the few songs playing in our bars, and the video in our theatres and drive-ins. We can't (nor do we have interest to) control actions of our tenants, so their music and media is definitely not unmetered."
We presume that the BigPond webpages will be updated soon to reflect this, and will keep an eye on them.
1. hehe This is why I love Telstra (not)
http://my.bigpond.com/pond/secondlife/moreaboutsl/default.jsp still says only the bigpond islands are free.
But the kicker is "However, there are thousands more islands in Second Life. Many of those are unmetered too – but new islands are being added all the time so we can't guarantee that visiting other islands won't affect your monthly usage total."
Which translates in Telstra-speak to many of these are unmetered, but we we won't tell you which, so when your bill arrives you have no way of telling.
As a result your 25GB $119.95 ADSL2+ plan suddenly starts amassing a charge of $0.15 per MB.
In September I used 29GB... so on that plan I would have been hit with an extra $614.40 (4GB x 1024 / 0.15) assuming the island I spent all my time on (Just one and it's brand new) is not on their (is it manually populated?) free list.
Posted at 8:14AM on Oct 19th 2007 by Jayden B