[Ultra Violet]

Hoi omae, hackers, white hats, spiders and virtualkinetics, I have a question for all of you (or the guys behind you):

How many people could use the same node at the same time?
The Persona limit is only the log in from the node itself, but is there a limit for logging in from another system?

I hope you understand what I try to say.

An example: A node Rating 2 has a Persona limit of 2, but how many user could be in it from the outside before the system is slowing down? Is it infinitely, because no extern user uses real system resources?

Background of that question is the idea of a technomancer "great sprite dance". If as many technomancers as can fits in one system node they could work as Guild and give each other high bonuses for Fading tests. For example: 100 technomancers in one node would give each other +99d6 for each Fading test.
And because of that they could compile the heaviest Sprites the 6th world ever saw...

And imagining DEUS whites as such a Guild if you want to play the R:AS or Brainscan in by SR4-Rules.

So a limit would be a blessing for the game-universe, I think.

Yours faithfully,
UV

[raggedhalo]

No, the persona limit as I understand it is the number of personas that can be logged in, regardless of their "home node".  The _system_ limit, which affects how many programs can be run before Response starts to degrade, is only for programs being run locally.

[Ultra Violet]

Persona Limit: This is the maximum number of persona that may simultaneously run/originate on the device. Note that this only counts users who are using this node to get online, it does not count persona running on another node that access this node.

The question is, is there another limit that limits the outside access?

[Chaemera]

Yeah, I see the problem you're getting at, UV. The only rule on subscription limits is how many a persona can maintain (SR4A, pg 224).

For a house rule, you could always run with a node can handle System x 5 external subscriptions, this follows the theme of "nodes are commlinks, but better" that seems to be the philosophy in Unwired.

Alternatively, you can rely on the GM making the call if/when it becomes excessive. Let's face it, though, there are "nodes" in real life that can handle over ten thousand subscriptions (WOW Servers, anyone?), so it just limits the number of places where the Great Sprite Dance can happen. Major stock exchanges seem like a logical choice... 

[Kontact]

Is an Icon a Persona?  I don't think so.

But a connection is a connection, so the subscription limit is what would cause problems.  To that end, the only way to up your subscription limit is to up your program limit to prevent response degradation to zero.  Where does that leave a TM when their bionode has no program limit? 

Disregarding that, there's always clustering.  That's a workable plot device.  One needs admin access to all nodes involved, so that just screams Technoboss.  Hacking bionodes is still a bit hazy for me though...

[joe15552]

Personas are not icons? Ack! I think I just blew a gasket... brain fluid... leaking...

I am not sure there should be a limit to the amount of people that can log on to a system. I understand that it hogs system resources to have people logged on to your system, but with such a small limit like 25 (5x5), it would be easy to bog a system down. How about a huge system with a system of 30. That is pretty mega big, but... only 150 people can log on to it? ouch... can't run a single corporate office with that...

About technomancers, i thought their personas use "unknown" resources. In other words, one million technomancer living personas could log on to some poor bastard's disposable comlink, and he'd still be able to shop on-line without noticing any lag.

[Morg]

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDOS)
...Even in 2070s, nodes have limits to the number of data transfers and access requests they can handle at once, though this is rarely an issue.
...in most cases, DDOS Attacks require massively large botnets, for standard nodes , reduce the target node's response by 1 for every system x4 bots flooding it with traffic.

it is not exactly what you asked for but i think it's near the mark UV

[joe15552]

Oh! I found that thing you were talking about UV with the adding dice to the fading test. Resisting Fading is cool, true, but remember that fading isn't everything. You still gotta beat that sprites rating on the opposed test. For example, let's say your technomancer was freakin awesome and had 12 resonance and 6 compiling and 6 registering. Thats 18 dice, not bad. You can probably compile a rating 18 sprite a little less than half the time, and register a rating 9 sprite a little less than half the time... of course that registering attempt would take 9 hours... hope they have catheters hooked up for potty breaks. I wouldn't say that's overpowered for a 200+ karma technomancer. I would also think it's realistic to think that that same technomancer would have enough friends to help him with the fading so he could keep trying when he fails, and he will probably fail once or twice working with sprites that high in rating.

[Ultra Violet]

@Morg
The DDOS is in the right direction but it isn't the same. The DDOS bots try to distract the System flooding
it with traffic of all kinds. The TM-Guild is only there and do nothing to the node itself, it is only a place to meet. That is the big difference.
So a friendly connection without extra traffic should be much higher in my opinion.

@joe15552
No Fading is one key element, the rest is only a question of resources and power or knowledge. The thing is that it is not only one TM that gets the Fading-bonus, no every technomancer of the Guild in that node gets it. Every f**king TM can compile the maxed out sprites or threading her Complex Forms to the Max. And there are many ways to improve the abilities of technomancer to compile or to thread.

Btw: There is no limit for the sprite rating! Most players think, it's like spirits (RES x 2), but it isn't one by RAW. There should be a limitation, but there isn't!

[joe15552]

How do you increase the compiling pool? I know there's some paragons that do, there's some specializations that do for certain sprites... Edge? That's all I can think of. No-one can assist you in opposed test for compiling a sprite as far as I know... Then again, I haven't been playing a technomancer as long as you have.

[Ultra Violet]

There are ways, believe me (see here). But a detailed answer is to far from the topic.

[Morg]

@Morg
The DDOS is in the right direction but it isn't the same. The DDOS bots try to distract the System flooding
it with traffic of all kinds. The TM-Guild is only there and do nothing to the node itself, it is only a place to meet. That is the big difference.
So a friendly connection without extra traffic should be much higher in my opinion.

I was thinking that as well, it might be more in the ballpark if we take the as baseline 4 bot/sprite per point intentionally trying to cause a slowdown and say that they use 10X the processing run time of a standard bot/sprite then it would be 40 bot/sprite per point of response. I don't have any RAW to support the numbers but it sounds reasonable for a common node if we keep in mind the rules for DDOS. If you accept this data set then the question becomes "Is a nexus a common node or does it require more to slow it down" looking at the way a nexus is written in RAW implies that it is not a common node and maybe requires 40X the user limit witch sounds monstrous but then it is a nexus.
Opinions?

[Ultra Violet]

House-Rule Options are many, but I'm not of a search for one, I'm searching for a RAW answer. At the moment your quote text is the nearest. But it is far from a good or controlling option, because a Node could have hundreds of technomancers before it can't take it anymore.
I think we miss something big, but what?

[Kot]

I think we miss something big, but what?

Logic. Not all connections are equal. Not every person or program logging in uses the same amount of system resources. The thing is, people with good gear and software would use up less, and regular users with crappy gear and deafult software could be a liability not only by being a weak, easily hackable link. The system they're in has to use some resources to compensate their weak hard/software, and that hogs up bandwidth, and procesor use.
I'd create a rule that a persona with good enough hard&software wouldn't count towards the limit, if it's not using the system actively, just merely being there. Like bloggers who are posting, chatroom attendants, and such. But not corporate drones using their home system to model elaborate production/sales simulations, or a sneaky hacker that decrypts a file using the system's own software...

[Kontact]

Personas are not icons? Ack! I think I just blew a gasket... brain fluid... leaking...

Persona's are represented by Icons, but an icon is not a persona.  A persona is what is generated on your link side while the icon is what is projected, as well as any other digital representation of a thing on the net.  A nexus can support multiple personas, so multiple people can jack in at that single access point.  Otherwise, a standard link node can only support one persona.  One persona, and an infinite number of icons.