Extremely slow download for update to 10.45

Question

Hi,

My broadband internet connection is fine, nevertheless I'm getting about 20 KB/s download speed (from Highwinds CDN) for the update to 10.45.

Whoever Highwinds CDN is, this is unacceptably slow. I experienced similar slow update speeds in the past, so this is not an isolated event.

Shame on Laminar for not implementing more efficient solutions !

Regards,

D

Comments

I'm in Seattle with a FIOS connection.  December 2016 same problem as yours almost 9 months ago.

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I agree, highwinds cdn doesn't perform well. I'm in Denver, CO on a 200 Mb/s connection and it's barely clearing 794 KB/s. My internet connection is monitored closely, I hit above my limit every where else. Please consider a new CDN for distributing your software.

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I'm hijacking the thread because I recently bought a new computer and have returned to the hobby. I have nearly the same issue, but much worse:

I'm trying to install the X-Plane 11 Demo but after several weeks I have given up, it always stalls in the beggining or doesn't even start sometimes. Even tried VPN, no go. My conn is a 200/100 Fiber, with amazing speeds everywhere. Don't use AV and my firewall is letting me even download Ubunt via torrents, so don't blame my machine.

Seems this issue hasn't been solved for 1 year now, so I guess I'm gonna take my money somewhere else, P3D or something else.

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Canada East Coast been 6 hours and still only half way or less downloaded Feb 7 2018  This is totally unacceptable .When will the developers get rid of this download server and go back to the original one  what's taking them so long with all these comments  think someone would wake up to the fact that they will lose customers if this keeps up .

I keep getting about 5 seconds of download and then it says cannot download check my internet connection

I have Bell Fiber and it is the fastest internet there is .No problem downloading anything else .

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i have the same problem with 100 mbps speed and only 1000kbps download from their  servermits annoying and my internet company is vodafone,my line is fine so this is a companys problem and not ours

Answer 1

Hi D,

I'm Tyler, one of the developers in charge of the download servers.

This is very troubling to hear!

Highwinds is a new service we've been trying out—it's aimed at making the downloads much, much faster (roughly 5x faster than our previous update host), so if it's actually slowing things down for some users, we certainly want to know why!

Would you be willing to run a few tests for me to help diagnose the problem? It might take a few rounds of tests to get to the bottom of it, but each test should be pretty quick for you.

If you're willing, here are the first steps toward diagnosing the problem. You're welcome to answer here (in a comment), or by emailing me---my email is [my first name]@x-plane.com.

1. You say you've experience similar slow update speeds in the past; about how far in the past is that? (A week, two weeks, a month, longer?)
2. Where are you located?
3. Can you download these two files for me and let me know how long each one takes? (This will tell us if the new Highwinds service is slower than our old server for you.)
   1. File 1
   2. File 2
4. Please run a speed test and let me know what it says your download speed is.

Comments

Dear Tyler,

Many thanks for your swift reply.

Both files downloaded markedly faster : File 1 @ 600 KB/s and File 2 @ 1800 KB/s.

I'm located in Brussels.

Updates in hte past are easily a few months ago.

Speedtest yielded about 18 Mb/s (this is normal speed for my wireless router / a fixed line would typically give up to 70 Mb/s but is not set up on my flightsim PC.

Many thanks for looking into this !

Kind regards,

David

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Well, those are definitely reasonable speeds! File 2 came from the new CDN, and it looks like the CDN was just about able to max out your connection (18 Mb/s is equivalent to 2300 KB/s).

At this point, there are two possibilities:

1. there's a problem in the installer itself which is giving you slow speeds, or
2. there was a temporary issue with Highwinds which had resolved itself by the time you tried the File 2 download.

Let's try this:

1. Download and run the demo installer, selecting to install a new copy of the demo. (You can install it anywhere you like, and delete it when you're through.)
2. Time the download and let me know how long it takes.
3. Immediately after the download finishes, try once more to download File 2 and let me know how fast you get it.

If the "File 2" download is fast, while the demo install is slow, it will indicate the problem lies with the installer; or, if they're both fast, it will indicate that Highwinds had a temporary (serious) speed issue which they've apparently resolved.

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Hi Tyler,
I installed the demo as requested and total time it took was 55 minutes, which seems a little bit longer than usual for 5 GB.
I noticed that besides the normal speeds of 2000-2200 KB/s which correspond to my max throughput, there were also periods of slow speeds around 10 KB/s.
I had the impression that the slow speeds occurred exclusively when downloading very small files like txt files. Large DDS files didn't seem to pose any problem.
File 2 was downloaded at around 2 MB/s, so again that was OK (large file).

For what it's worth, I recently had to copy a large batch of files from an old external drive (USB2) to my PC and I also had moments of slow 1 MB/s transfer rates for many small files, whereas large files attained the expected 40MB/s rates.

Maybe packaging the tiny files in one large compressed file would do the trick ?

KR,

David.

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...of course I meant "a little bit longer than usual" ... :-)

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55 minutes for the demo corresponds to roughly 1550 KB/s---not maxing out your connection speed overall, but not wasting it either.

Brief drops in speed (for small files, as you noticed) are expected---there's some amount of overhead for each file downloaded; for large files, that overhead is comparatively minuscule, but for small files, it can be significant.

There's one important difference between the demo and the updates, which is (as you guessed) that the demo packs many of the smaller files together, offsetting a lot of the per-file overhead. It generally isn't possible to do the same for updates, because we can't be sure in advance which files a person will need.

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OK thanks a lot for this clear explanation, very interesting...

But I thought the updater checks which files are needed and so maybe somekind of packing together would be possible...

Anyways, I feel a lot better to know that the low speeds were not due to low bandwidth but rather due to normal overhead issues associated with very small files...

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Sorry, I should clarify: with new technology, it is possible to pack the updates. But, this isn't something we're looking at doing in the near future, since it would require significant changes in the installer, and we're stuck supporting the version of the installer that comes on the X-Plane 10 DVDs for the foreseeable future. (In essence, we can't overhaul the way we ship updates without also overhauling the updater.)

So, while this is a possibility for the future, it won't happen soon.

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Folks I am in Kuwait with the US Army and my download time from Highwinds is over 40 hours?? !!...Ok my connection is slow -  10Mbps,  but it is stable and I have validated throughput to major US Ip's at around 9-10 Mbps.

Please advise.

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chrisnia,

I think your best bet is to initially install only a minimal amount of scenery---just the area you're going to be flying most often. (The scenery is far and away the biggest part of the download.)

Then, you can always add more scenery later by re-running the installer and choosing "Add or Remove Scenery."

(For what it's worth, if you were trying a full, ~70 GB install at 10 Mbps, the expected time is about 16 hours---and the installer's estimate at the beginning of the install is typically pessimistic, because there's a lot more overhead to download the first files compared to the scenery.)

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I'm in Australia, on a 100mbit/sec connection and I'm getting a download rate of about 200kb/sec. The full install with scenery is apparently going to take 80-100hrs. Is this just a problem with the CDN?

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I'm in Djibouti on a 1Mbs line and I'm averaging an update speed of from x-plane 10 to 10.5 of about 28kbs on a line that speed checks right now at 0.84Mbs with a ping of 2.13ms.  I don't think Highwinds is doing you (or me) any favors.

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Mine here to is painfully slow. Bought it even though got the steam edition so to upgrade to X plane 11 in the future. Steam was this long to download. It must be amount of people having the same idea and the servers are swamped.

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Mine is also painfully slow. It took 2 and a half days to finish downloading. It downloaded at 524kb/s at first and then In the middle, It downloaded at 0.01 kb/s

I recomend x plane to not use Highwinds CDN

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This download speed is very very sloooooooow. I have done a speed test (91.14mbs) download and the fastest I can get via highwinds cdn is 540kbs.

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Run a speed test  are you kidding I have Fiber internet  fastest in the world and this server is the pits  Get rid of it or you will lose customers over this . I would like to fly not watch a blue line do nothing for 6 hours or more . Just did your speed test and the ping was 1 ms Download was 218.51 mbps  Fast enough for you???

Feb 7 2018  posted this

totally annoyed .