On November 17, 2005 03:42 am, Vic Fraenckel wrote:
> I am writing for advice about download speeds from various locations.
> I have been trying to download a large (56Mb) file from a site in
> France.
>
> http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/index.html
>
> I have a good broadband internet connection and normally have no
> problems getting good download connection speeds. However with this
> site I have never been able to get above 20kBits/sec. I have asked on
> the usergroup for the software I am trying to get and have been told
> by several of the members that they have not experienced this
> slowness and most report download speeds of up to 200KBits/sec
> speeds. I try both the HTTP and FTP places. I attempt the download
> throughout the day (for three days now), morning, early afternoon and
> early evening with exactly the same results. I live on the east coast
> of the US so I am accessing the French site in the late morning, mid
> afternoon and mid evening hours. Experiments with other sites in
> europe that I know and attempting to download large files have NOT
> exhibited this behavior so I believe my broadband connection is not
> the problem.

Most likely a network connection misconfigured between you and the 
website. You could ping the path to see which points are between you 
and the site... anyone of those possible points could be misconfigured.

Another possibility, but less likely, is competitive services will 
throttle-back the speed, for example let's say AOL doesn't like 
microsoft using it's network, so they will throttle-back the speed so 
that it makes the microsoft service look bad. In this case, because you 
have to go from network X to network Y just to get your info, it's an 
unfortunate problem.... anyhow, I'm not saying it is happening, but it 
is technically possible, so it can be possible.

Other issues are, some services are considered headaches to some ISPs 
and they purposely throttle-back the speed. For example, just recently 
on VanLug (see here:
http://www.linux.org/groups/canada/britishcolumbia.html )
someone just indicated that shaw is slowing down bittorrents.
subject "bittorrent capped on Shaw?"

> What might be the problem? I am clueless and am hoping someone here
> might shed some light on my problem.
>
> Any enlightenment will be appreciated.

Get an appropriate linux (assuming you are doing this via windows), such 
as knoppix or mandrake and use it for downloading. One of the noted 
features are that they "resume" from where they last left-off, so if 
you got 10% done, you don't start again, but simply resume from there 
onto 11%. Otherwise look for another ftp client like gFTP, or something 
else.

Try configuring your computer to TX/RX smaller packets. It IS more 
overhead, but you have better chance of packets getting across, 
especially if you are attempting to send info through a possibly 
misconfigured point somewhere between you and the website in question.
Another thing is letting your computer wait just a little longer for 
packets to arrive... maybe your computer times-out too soon when it 
should wait just a bit longer...especially for those jumps across the 
ocean.

Third, Get someone else to download whatever it is, then have them send 
it to you, since it goes via a different route and most likely doesn't 
have problems.

> BTW: Kicad is an open source PCB design and layout package which
> might be interesting if I can ever get a copy. Anyone know of it?
>
> Vic
> ________________________________________________________
>
> Victor Fraenckel - The Windman
> victorf ATSIGN windreader DOT com
> KC2GUI
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist