The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
Server Deployments
Tuesday, November 9th saw simhosts on the SLS Main channel restarted, but no actual simulator update, leaving them running version 565008.
Wednesday, November 10th should see regions on the RC channel restart:
The majority of RC simhosts will be restarted without any update, also leaving them running simulator version 565008.
Those servers on the Bluesteel channel will be updated to version 565204, containing the outcome of the recent work in updating the simulator toolsets. Testing of the simulators using the new tools has shown “significant improvement” in simulator operations, so the hope is that this will be reflected in the deployed version.
SL Viewer
This list reflects those official viewers available via Linden Lab.
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15.
360 Snapshot RC viewer, version 6.5.0.564863, issued October 21.
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.5.0.564805, on October 20.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20.
Project viewers:
Performance Improvements project viewer, version 6.4.23.564530, dated October 12.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Apple Notarisation Viewer Issue
With the release of the Apple Notarisation Viewer there were updates to many of the viewer’s third party libraries, and some of these updates have be found to cause issues related to playback of certain media types in-world (notably MP3s and MP4s). A fix is in progress, and once ready, LL intend to fast track it through QA ahead of other viewer updates and make an RC viewer with the fix available ASAP.
TLS Changes
Monty Linden provided an update on the status of disabling TLS 1.0 / 1.1 and future certification work:
There are some ongoing issues [with] a combination of effects in play. In Bug-231303, we have reports of failed cipher negotiation. Right now, only three ciphers are available under tls1.2 on login. I hope to strictly expand that. *HOWEVER* this is where that old viewer cert checking code comes in and does the wrong thing. Future certs will not have the ‘key encipherment’ usage extension – and those old checks need to disappear from all viewers and bots and comms libraries.
We can’t check every combination people try to use. We can’t even check many combinations, but we’re heading in the direction of wider conformity of the rest of the net. I would like to be able to offer testing on Aditi prior to future changes but we’ve coupled the two grids in an unfortunately way. That might take time to separate. Maintained clients that updated the cert check should work. Old libomv stuff that is broken currently may or may not be repaired (some will, some won’t). Anyone truly doing their own thing will have to answer to the crypto gods.
The reg changes should hold up. But more changes will be coming in ’22 and beyond. Things that have gone unmaintained for years are going to be very susceptible to crypto changes in the wider world. This is the warning.
For client authentication where Linden doesn’t control the server endpoint, I’m thinking other authentication schemes are in order. OAuth2, etc. We had a high-level LSL discussion the other week. Better supporting auth schemes for scripting would be one of these. But it also enters into having private storage and secrets management. I.e. all the stuff real cloud providers have to do. Even that is a project. All of which would be A Really Good Thing.
Monty Linden
This commentary rolled into a wider discussion of potential scripting options and of further HTTP work. In terms of the former, Monty indicated that the Lab is not ready to increase script memory limits, because there is a believe that ” we can make the memory you have do more.” He also indicated that amongst the backlog of work is a Mono update, but could not say when that might progress to a point of being worked on.
L2 Studio and LLOOQ Gallery, July 2021 – blog post
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, November 4th 2021 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
AVAILABLE VIEWERS
This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15.
360 Snapshot RC viewer, version 6.5.0.564863, issued October 21.
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.5.0.564805, on October 20.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20.
Project viewers:
Performance Improvements project viewer, version 6.4.23.564530, dated October 12.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Graphics Work
As has been previously reported in my user group meeting summaries, a core focus of work at the Lab is on performance improvements, both on the back-end and in the viewer.
With the viewer, the work is very much on improving graphics / frame rate performance (utilising the Tracy analyser). Much of this work has been to move non-rendering operations currently in the main rendering thread to their own / other threads.
In October, the first cut of a project viewer featuring the fruits of this work was issue (see Performance Improvements Viewer in the list above), and an update to this viewer is expected in the next working day or so.
Once the updated version of the viewer is available, users are encouraged to take it for a test and see if they can see improvements in rendering / FPS rates.
Overall, the Graphics team plan to spend around two more weeks in general performance updates. before the work will shift to stabilising the changes so far made to the viewer (which has been acknowledged as being “crashy” at this point in time).
Once the stabilisation work has been completed, the hope is that the viewer will be in a position to progress forward through the RC cycle to enter the queue for promotion to release status around the the end of the year, with actual promotion coming in early 2022.
Separate to the above, Runitai is currently working on the fork of the render pipe inside the avatar draw pool that handles the rendering of avatar rigged meshes. The aim is to move this work to the same machinery that handles the other draw pools, and so hopefully enable rigged mesh rendering to be handled on a batch basis, rather than one face at a time as is currently the case, thus giving a potentially substantial performance boost.
In Brief
WRT to performance, it was pointed out that the baseline hardware specifications LL give for Second Life are route in hardware between 10-15 years old, and so many users tend to stick to outdated hardware. Thus the situation is somewhat double-edged: ending support for older systems would allow LL to focus more on updating and improving SL to run on more recent hardware; however, by the same measure, it risks “locking out” users who may be unable to move on to more recent hardware in order to stay reasonably “current”.
Work is still in progress trying to overcome the Apple Notarisation / media issues and outlined here. Part of the problem was the result of LL using a very old VLC. However, getting a new VLC to be recognised by the notarisation process is also proving problematic.
A request was made to all region owners to be able to automatically drop a general information package on preferred viewer settings, etc., on users arriving in a region. Given automated notecard givers can already do this, and many of the “recommendations” are completely over the top for many systems (e.g. “set your graphics to Ultra, enable shadows and set your draw distance to 500+ m”), no advantage is seen in providing a capability to provide this information (presumably via a chat channel).
Similarly, pro-actively scanning viewer settings using LSL as visitors arrive and “advising” them about the recommended settings for a region should some of their own be “below” the recommendation, was also seen as not particularly advantageous unless it was somehow made an opt-in capability that those who do wish to receive such information can do so.
It is recognised that Pathfinding is overdue for some improvements, and it *might* be that it gets looked at in the future; however there are no definite plans beyond considering what might be done, and poking at feature requests, etc., that have been filed for Pathfinding.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021.
These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and the following is a summary of key topics / discussions.
Web Properties
Search: The front-end of search has been given a facelift which among other things, is designed to make web search returns easier to read. This should be deployed in the next couple of weeks.
Note that the actual search algorithm has not been altered at this point – so search results, relevancy, etc., should not change.
A further overhaul of search which does include tightening the algorithm and improving results / relevancy and general performance will be initiated in the New Year, and will apparently utilise third-party expertise external to LL in an attempt to get a “first class” search implementation.
Marketplace has continued to see bugs being fixed – although no specific details on which bugs.
SL Mobile
It was reiterated (as per Mojo Linden’s comments at the end of October TPVD meeting) that while development work has paused, LL are not “giving up” on a Mobile solution.
The pause is liable to last “a number of weeks”.
There is a “lot going in” and the Lab is “excited” about what will hopefully be forthcoming, and is very aware there has been a degree of disappointment that nothing has been publicly released thus far.
In Brief
Some MP store owners are stating they have seen between a 30% and 50% drop in sales in the latter half of October, LL start they have not seen anything to indicate an across-the board decline in MP sales volumes – in fact, they have seen the reverse.
The next batch of new Premium Last Names will be made available at Christmas.
Bug Questions – it was asked why the following were allowed to persist for “two weeks”:
BUG-231218 “Boolean search terms in Marketplace result in error page” – LL’s view is that the fix was available within a few days of the report being filed, and deployed shortly thereafter.
BUG-231307 “[Marketplace] – Favourite stores layout change now shows listings that are not active.” – again, a fix was developed relatively quickly, and is currently awaiting deployment.
A bug that results in 0 traffic reports for regions that have received visitors is not the result of any changes to the traffic count algorithm, but likely the result of the database that handles traffic having had some issues recently.
There have been complaints about MP listings / pages getting blocked by ad blockers. This is not something LL can control; those services providing ad blockers can change their own algorithms as they please, and LL cannot test for everything – a certain about of action on the users’ side will always be required.
New Starter Avatars: although outside the scope the Web Team, it was reiterated that this is something under discussion, but not something liable to be surfaced in the immediate future.
LL / Zenescope / Epik / NFT Sweepstake
Also not the responsibility of the Web Team but Brett Linden, VP of Marketing was present at the meeting an commented on the recent NFT sweepstake, run in conjunction with Zenescope and Epik (see: Zenescope x Second Life NFT Sweepstakes Official Rules).
LL are very aware of the response,
Of the three social media channels use, responses on Twitter were primarily “negative”; Instagram was “positive” and Facebook “neutral”.
The company had and is looking at the whole NFT situation “guardedly”,
They are aware NFTs are polarising.
LL has received multiple requests to partner with others to offer NFTs, but outside of the sweepstake have thus far “avoided every single one”.
As a whole, LL have “no plans” to get into the “NFT business” itself; the sweepstake was purely a cross-platform / partnership promotion, apparently in part to try to call attention to SL / LL given the general “metaverse” hype that is going on.
In terms of Zenescope itself:
It was re-iterated that this is a licensed deal, of which the NFTs offered through the sweepstake do not form a central part.
However, Epik (outside of their EpikPrime marketplace) is the agency handling the IP for Zenescope to market virtual goods, etc., thought their presence in SL.
In terms of the Zenescope Metaverse, further roll-outs of content, etc., to enhance the experience will be made in due course.
The end of the meeting includes a brief discussion on the Facebook / Meta name change and what it might mean for Second Life / LL (particularly the concern – also raised at the TPVD meeting on October 29th – that Facebook might buy Linden Lab, something to which my personal view is simply, “no, they won’t”; something I may elaborate on in a future post) and “metaverse” hype in general.
Next Meeting
Wednesday, December 8th, 14:00 SLT, with a core subject of Place Pages.
Tierra Mer Mar, LeLoo’s World, July 2021 – blog post
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
Server Deployments
Tuesday, November 2nd saw simhost on the SLS Main channel updated to the simulator release deployed to the RC channel in week #43. This includes a revised implementation of PRIM_PROJECTION.
For the time being, it will be write only, meaning it can used in llSetPrimitiveParams but not in llGetPP. The associated wiki documentation has yet to be updated.
This update will also include BUG-231158 Allow llGetNotecardLine to return more than 255 bytes (to a maximum of 1023 characters).
Wednesday, November 3rd should see regions on the RC channel restart, but no deployment made, and version numbers should not change.
SL Viewer
This list reflects those viewers available via the first four links in the LL Viewer Resources section, below.
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15.
360 Snapshot RC viewer, version 6.5.0.564863, issued October 21.
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.5.0.564805, on October 20.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17.
Project viewers:
Performance Improvements project viewer, version 6.4.23.564530, dated October 12.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Apple Notarisation Viewer Issue
With the release of the Apple Notarisation Viewer there were updates to many of the viewer’s third party libraries, and some of these updates have be found to cause issues related to playback of certain media types in-world (notably MP3s and MP4s). A fix is in progress, and once ready, LL intend to fast track it through QA ahead of other viewer updates and make an RC viewer with the fix available ASAP.
TLS Changes
As per the announcement by April Linden on October 8th, Linden Lab turned off support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and TLS 1.1 security protocols on all log-in services (in line with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) having officially deprecated both protocols in March 2021). However, it resulted for older services running Windows 7 (lacking TLS 1.2 support unless running with Service Pack 1 – see BUG-231303 “Scripted agents can no longer log in”, and also this blog post from Cinder Roxley.
In Brief
The Map tile server is currently “note working”, so the Map may display issues in updating. Steps are being taken to identify tiles that are not updating and rectifying the problem – it is hoped the fix should be in place by November 3rd.
Tool update work / server OS update remains the primary focus within the simulator engineering team.
There was general discussion on possible work the team might try around temp attachments and alternatives to HUDs, but nothing that is close to being discussed in depth.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, October 29th, 2021.
These meetings are generally held every other week. They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.
SL Viewer
This list gives the status for all currently available official viewers.
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15.
With the release of the Apple Notarisation Viewer there were updates to many of the viewer’s third party libraries, and some of these updates have be found to cause issues related to playback of certain media types in-world (notably MP3s and MP4s). A fix is in progress, and once ready, LL intend to fast track it through QA ahead of other viewer updates and make an RC viewer with the fix available ASAP.
However, for those wishing to avoid the issue, the following workarounds are offered:
Windows:
Uninstall the Second Life viewer the usual way.
Navigate to your Program Files folder (Win 64-bit) or Program Files (x86) (Win 32-bit); locate and delete the “SecondLifeViewer” folder.
Download and install the Simplified Cache viewer (the previous release viewer).
Apple Mac:
Remove the Apple Notarisation viewer from your system.
Download and install the Simplified Cache viewer (the previous release viewer).
Read the instructions on this page to work through any occurrences of unwanted notarisation warnings.
As has been reported in these pages, the Lab is focusing on a range of performance improvements in both the viewer and on the back-end. In respect of the viewer, a new Performance Improvements project viewer has been released (linked to above. This prompted an update from Runitai Linden and Ptolemy Linden of the graphics team during the meeting:
The core of the viewer work thus far has been on profiling and optimisation using the Tracy debugger.
Results thus far are described as going “pretty well” with some systems / hardware and “not bearing much fruit” for others.
The Lab are keen to get feedback from users for this viewer – particularly in comparing frame rates with the current official viewer release.
However, the request for users to try the viewer come with the warning: it is known to suffer regular crashes, in part because LL have been playing “fast and loose” with settings, such as enabling OpenGL core profile, and also as a result of experimenting with moving some processes to background threads, etc., – although the overall effect of such thread moves is eventually to provide improved performance in stable viewers.
Windows 32-bit and a version for Apple will be made available in due course. However, the Apple version is subject to frame rate issues associated with the Mac build being rectified.
The availability of an external analysis tool that can be enabled during the viewer compile process means that a lot of the internal instrumentation within the viewer will likely be removed – notably around block timers, which can generate a lot of performance woes.
Upcoming Work
Future work includes adding further threading capabilities:
Nat Linden working on a generic project to try to unify all the various background threads into something that can pick-up any given task, removing the need for multiple threads effectively being “asleep” for much of the time, but taking up processing cycles.
Runitai is working on re-writing how rigged avatar attachments are handled. This is perhaps the most frame-intensive operation performed by the viewer in trying to draw them individually (none of the operations are batched).
Runitai is currently working on the fork of the render pipe inside the avatar draw pool that handles this work and move it to the same machinery that handles the other draw pools,. This should hopefully enable rigged mesh rendering to be handled on a batch basis, rather than one face at a time.
(There are some hurdles to overcome with this, such as texture changes; however, if the work is successful this could result in a substantial reduction in the number of draw calls the viewer has to perform with avatars+rigged mesh).
A degree of optimisation has already been carried out with rigged meshes (e.g. not re-uploading the matrix palette for every single face when it can be re-used which should help reduce draw calls; looking at the extra load placed on the viewer by making singletons thread safe, thus causing viewer locking, etc.).
OpenGL textures now have a dedicated thread and GL context (LLimageGL) for processing and then re-sync’d back to the main thread, which has resolved a lot of frame stalls. This working currently encompasses all fetched textures (sky rendering and media texture rendering is still bound to the main thread).
Ptolemy Linden is looking into render frame stalls (e.g. due to some EEP calls getting into a loop and can cause stuttering in the viewer).
Uniform buffer objects have also been looked at, but it requires a further tidy-up of other code within the rendering system (e.g. handling of EEP parameters) before any real results will become visible with this work.
Increasing the Default VRAM limit from 512 MB
Runitai referred to the limit as misleading, as the system will use more VRAM where available, even with the limit set.
LL have run into problems in low-end systems running out of memory if the value is increased (possibly because Intel don’t provide an API to provide information on actual VRAM usage), and so the request was put to TPVs who have solved this issue to consider supplying the Lab with a patch they could look at, it would be appreciated.
As has been noted in previous meeting summaries, Apple are deprecating OpenGL on their OS. This has prompted LL to look for alternative APIs.
Runitai indicated that MoltenGL may be looked at specifically for Apple. This essentially provides many of the performance benefits of the Metal framework, while maintaining compliance with the OpenGL ES 2.0 API. However, any move towards this solution will require further evaluation, together with a better understanding of how possible licensing requirements might impact TPVs.
Beyond this, all plans remain fluid. The options primarily under consideration are:
Using Vulkan (Windows) and Metal (Apple).
Running Vulkan extraction layers on top of G3D on Windows (and MoltenGL for Apple?)
Implementing an off-the-shelf multi-API extraction layer.
Home-brew a dedicated extraction layer.
Stick with OpenGL for Windows and use MoltenGL for Apple (as noted above).
Initially supporting Vulkan + OpenGL for Windows and then retiring OpenGL and running Vulkan extraction layers on top of G3D (no word on Apple solutions in this scenario)
However, a consensus has yet to be reached on the direction to be taken, the focus is on furthering an clean-up of the rendering code and improving performance on OpenGL as far as possible, then consider making the move to alternatives.
So far there do not appear to have been any significant issues encountered by LL / users in using Second Life on Windows 11 as the latter is made more broadly available.
There are a couple of reported minor issues:
BUG-231041 “[Windows 11] Memory creep running with Windows Insider Beta version, when Viewer is minimised”, which has apparently yet to be confirmed as an issue with the release version of Win 11.
The viewer reports the OS build as: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 22000 [and above]).
If anyone is encountering reproducible issues which appear to be tied to Windows 11, please file a Jira.
As has been reported elsewhere, work on the SL Mobile App for iOS has been suspended for the time being. Commenting on why and for how long, Mojo Linden (LL’s VP of Engineering) commented:
LL is still “very interested in moving things forward in the mobile space”.
The pause is liable to last “a number of weeks”.
The hope is that following any review, the Lab will be bringing “bigger and better things to the table”, although the pause has also been due to the need to divert resources into other work.
Not much more was said (in part because Mojo did not want to steal Grumpity Linden’s thunder), but there will be “more news in the future”.
In Brief
[Video: 1:16-1:42] Chap Linden is the new Product Manager for the viewer, taking over from Alexa Linden. He has been with the Lab for around two weeks (at the time of writing), and his responsibilities may expand in time.
[Video: 20:25-26:00] A general discussion on viewer build tools and simulator-side changes on the beta grid to ease viewer build testing.
[Video: 43:32-42:50] LL is apparently dealing with an (allegedly) China-based website that has (or had) been using the Second Life name to illegally sell cryptocurrency.
Kitty Barnett from the Catznip team hopes to be able to contribute her work on Linden Water occlusion (so “unseen” Linden Water is effectively ignored by the viewer, reducing the render load & improvement frame rates) to the Lab Soon™.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 26th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
Server Deployments
Tuesday, October 26th saw the simhosts on the SLS main channel restarted without any update.
Wednesday, October 27th should see the deployment of simulator version that includes a revised implementation of PRIM_PROJECTION.
For the time being, it will be write only, meaning it can used in llSetPrimitiveParams but not in llGetPP. The associated wiki documentation has yet to be updated.
This update will also include BUG-231158 Allow llGetNotecardLine to return more than 255 bytes (to a maximum of 1023 characters).
SL Viewer
There have been no updates to the current crop on official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15 – see notes below.
360 Snapshot RC viewer, version 6.5.0.564863, issued October 21.
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.5.0.564805, on October 20.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20.
Project viewers:
Performance Improvements project viewer, version 6.4.23.564530, dated October 12.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Apple Notarisation Viewer Issue
With the release of the Apple Notarisation Viewer there were updates to many of the viewer’s third party libraries, and some of these updates have be found to cause issues related to playback of certain media types in-world including, but not possibly limited to MP3s and MP4s. LL are working towards a fix, but in the meantime, workaround are offered:
Windows:
Uninstall the Second Life viewer the usual way.
Navigate to your Program Files folder (Win 64-bit) or Program Files (x86) (Win 32-bit); locate and delete the “SecondLifeViewer” folder.
Download and install the Simplified Cache viewer (the previous release viewer).
Apple Mac:
Remove the Apple Notarisation viewer from your system.
Download and install the Simplified Cache viewer (the previous release viewer).
Read the instructions on this page to work through any occurrences of unwanted notarisation warnings.
In Brief
With the on-going work to analyse viewer performance using the Tracy debugger / system analyser (see my TPV Developer summaries for more), the simulator team are looking to try and leverage that work on the simulator side, once the current tools upgrade on the server-side has been completed.
There was a 10-minutes discussion around animated particles / revising the particle systems, but there is nothing on the card for immediate work.
The upcoming simhost operating system upgrade (also to follow the completion of the tools upgrade) was also discussed. Essentially there is a lot of work to be done, and the potential for regressions or other issues to occur. However, LL are planning things as carefully as possible; no overall decision as to how it will be deployed to the main grid come time for it to do so – mainly because the work has yet to start.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 