Second Life grid reopen [updated]
The Second Life grid difficulties and outage, which have lasted approximately eight hours, appear to have been resolved. The problem was identified as major packet loss in the network interconnects provided by Linden Lab's network service provider (we presume that that is still the company Level 3).
The grid reopened for logins just now, at 3:30AM SLT (US Pacific time). It remains to be seen if there are any lasting problems or content loss from the extended difficulties.
Update: The same network problems are back. The grid isn't closed yet, but it may not be long before it does, at this rate.
7:30 SLT: Grid logins are closed down - which doesn't make much difference actually as the login servers and SL website went off the air about 20 minutes ago anyway.
9:10 SLT: All users who haven't gotten out of Dodge (so to speak) are being forcibly disconnected while corrective measures are under way. We can more or less consider the grid to be completely off the air at this point.
11:30 SLT: It is now 16 hours since the trouble began, and no end is in sight yet. We're certainly looking forward to the detailed post-mortem on this one.
12:55 PM SLT: A little over 17 hours. A faulty router has been identified at the network carrier and worked-around. The grid is open, but logins are slow as many thousands of users try to log in at once.
