Site and download very slow

[randall814]

If the site can't handle the load, why don't we use external download links with a backup being uploaded to the site for instances where links die? I'm averaging 77KB/s on a 1.2 Gbps connection. On a 400MB file that should download in seconds.

 

[Neilski]

If the site can't handle the load, why don't we use external download links with a backup being uploaded to the site for instances where links die? I'm averaging 77KB/s on a 1.2 Gbps connection. On a 400MB file that should download in seconds.

We're considering various options to improve things, but I'm afraid there's no timescale at present for any changes.

 

[hashdaberry]

We're considering various options to improve things, but I'm afraid there's no timescale at present for any changes.

i get 7.7mb/s (not megabit, megabyte) on steam and can get barely 90 kilobytes a second here. what kind of stuff are you guys running on your servers? don't yall charge a lot of money for server upkeep because im constantly harassed by the site close my adblocker? ive been here for like an hour and the adblock already blocked 345 ads as the time of writing. you arent based in turkey where every electronic cost a minimum of threefold the actual price so the hardware isnt an issue which also includes the internet price. are you guys the ea counterpart of simracing or something?

 

[trichens]

I'd suggest that this is due as much to do with when you download - and of course "Premium" membership.
I've just downloaded a couple of rF2 tracks at around 250Mb and 183 Mb and they took around 5 to 10 secs on a 500Mb connection - although about half that on the wireless connection in this particular laptop.
And for a little more than 1 euro per month you can remove ads and support RaceDepartment - win win!

 

[trichens]

An alternative people could try is a download manager?
I've just installed one and it allowed me to download the rF2 Queensland Raceways Track Pack rfcmp file which is 380Mb in around 23secs... which I can live with...

It was around 21:50 UK BST when I downloaded this file. Don't know how busy the servers are at this time; perhaps admins could advise on this?

 

[Neilski]

An alternative people could try is a download manager?
I've just installed one and it allowed me to download the rF2 Queensland Raceways Track Pack rfcmp file which is 380Mb in around 23secs... which I can live with...

It was around 21:50 UK BST when I downloaded this file. Don't know how busy the servers are at this time; perhaps admins could advise on this?

Well, as a Premium member you shouldn't need to do anything special to get high download speeds. (Also, the site is configured to prevent download managers from achieving much )

 

[To45t]

Very Slow Download Speeds

 

[To45t]

I live in Greece and although I don't have the best download speeds it's better than 80kb/s.
I've looked through the forums with people having the same (supposedly) issue and i simply cannot see the solution

 

[Neilski]

In short, the site is a little too popular for its available bandwidth.
Until we resolve this in a general way (no timescale yet for that), there are only two ways to work around the issue (I won't call them "solutions"):
1) download at off-peak times (basically means: avoid European afternoon/evening)
2) sign up for Premium to get prioritised downloads (at present this costs €14.99/yr or €2.99/month; note that a few people have network connectivity issues to our ISP that prevent Premium status from really helping)

 

[To45t]

I

In short, the site is a little too popular for its available bandwidth.
Until we resolve this in a general way (no timescale yet for that), there are only two ways to work around the issue (I won't call them "solutions"):
1) download at off-peak times (basically means: avoid European afternoon/evening)
2) sign up for Premium to get prioritised downloads (at present this costs €14.99/yr or €2.99/month; note that a few people have network connectivity issues to our ISP that prevent Premium status from really helping)

I see, thanks for replying. I hope a general server upgrade will come sooner than later.

 

[Worcester_sauce]

Wait no I'm blind

Then where is it? I don't see one

 

[Neilski]

Then where is it? I don't see one

Please post a screenshot so we can work out what's going on.

 

[Baaardman1990]

Edit: right at this moment, the site is busy but a 200 MB download should still take no more than 10 minutes for non-Premium users (and much less than that for Premium) unless there is another issue at play (like the problem many of the DT customers are having)

The Fact that you blame every ones ISP for the SLOW Download Speed is shocking...
Seems you are throttling the **** out of the Downloads for Non Premium Members...
100kb/s seems a bit harsh don't you think?...
ALSO weird how everyone's ISP is the issue but all end up at around 100kb/s download cap...

YOU ARE THROTTELING TO 100kb/s!!!

LA Canyons Download:

This is going to hurt seeing as most mods are on RD and there's not much choice to go anywhere else...

I ask you neilski,
you give me a download to complete that will actually hit your target, seeing as myself and seems like alot other are not able to get the numbers you state we should...

ANYWAY, 1 hour + waiting for 200mb to load...
might aswell revert back to GPRS phone connection!!

 

[Neilski]

The Fact that you blame every ones ISP for the SLOW Download Speed is shocking...
Seems you are throttling the **** out of the Downloads for Non Premium Members...
100kb/s seems a bit harsh don't you think?...
ALSO weird how everyone's ISP is the issue but all end up at around 100kb/s download cap...

YOU ARE THROTTELING TO 100kb/s!!!

LA Canyons Download:
View attachment 608746

This is going to hurt seeing as most mods are on RD and there's not much choice to go anywhere else...

I ask you neilski,
you give me a download to complete that will actually hit your target, seeing as myself and seems like alot other are not able to get the numbers you state we should...

ANYWAY, 1 hour + waiting for 200mb to load...
might aswell revert back to GPRS phone connection!!

I'm gonna take a moment to reply, though I probably shouldn't waste your time and mine.
Your assertions are wrong on pretty much every front...

A modest portion of the total server bandwidth is prioritised for Premium downloads. This is rarely all used and when it isn't all used it's available to - yes, you guessed it - non-Premium downloads.
We are not throttling non-Premium to 100 kB/s - that's a simple consequence of so many non-Premium users downloading at the same time. You can do the arithmetic fairly easily: if you have a gigabit/second pipe and many hundreds or more simultaneous downloads (not to mention the bandwidth used by the forum itself), how much does each person get? Yup, it can get as bad as around 100 kB/s at really busy times.
You also need to read that post you quoted more carefully. The time I quoted was for a snapshot in time - at that particular moment back in July, a 200 MB download was taking less than 10 minutes for non-Premium users. And the "blaming everyone's ISPs" - ffs, again please read what I have actually said: some people (not many) get much less bandwidth than they should, not because of congestion on the RD server pipe but instead congestion on the network links between their ISP and ours (and the key point is that Premium won't help those unlucky few). Even still though, if you're getting the 95-100 kB/s that you mention, 200 MB is only a ~35-minute download. (Your screenshot is actually for a 397 MB download.)

The message for everyone, like I've said a few times now, is that until we get this sorted properly in a way that keeps all users happy (and we very much want to), the nuclear option for any given user is always to splash out a king's ransom* and upgrade to Premium for a while for better speeds (plus other benefits, along with the nice side-effect of supporting the site). People who choose not to do that can still get very high download speeds though, simply by avoiding peak times (European afternoons/evenings).
(* OK maybe I exaggerate: even the subscription with the least good value - 1 month for €3 - has a monthly cost in the same ballpark as a single cup of coffee in most countries, no? And it's less than half as expensive if you buy a 1-year upgrade. I don't think I need to ask anyone to marvel at how insignificant this is compared to the purchase and upkeep cost of the rig they are sitting at.)

 

[Fat-Alfie]

BUT I DEMAND EVERYTHING IS FREE, COS I IZ SPECIAL !!1!1

So people expect mods to be made for free, and then hosted on RD for free, and won't even put up with a few ads to help pay for the costs... entitled brats

 

[moparhippy420]

See below.

Umm, what? Please show me the posts where staff are blaming users or a random ISP.
You might instead find posts where we point out that some ISPs have connectivity issues to our ISP and ask some people to contact their ISP to see if they can address it.

See below.

Disingenuous in the extreme. Shame on you.

OK, I recommend taking a quick look at this post for background info.

In short: there are two main reasons for slow downloads:
#1 when our site server's bandwidth is overloaded
#2 when the links between your ISP and our site's ISP are congested.

(NB: bandwidth is a case-sensitive world, using "b" for bits and "B" for bytes - it doesn't help that various bits of ordinary PC software will show you speeds in different units, and since there's a factor of 8 between MB/s and Mb/s it's rather important to check if the b was uppercase or lowercase )

Working out which reason is likely to be active for you:

If your download speeds are getting down to the region of 1 Megabit/s (1 Mb/s) which is around 120 kilobytes/second (120 kB/s), at European peak times (weekday afternoons from maybe 16:00 UTC, weekends from more like 10:00 UTC, until maybe 23:00 UTC typically), then the load on our server is probably to blame. We are working on long-term fixes for that, but in the short term we do now have prioritisation for downloads by Premium members.

If however your download speeds are dramatically lower still - say 200 kb/s (around 25 kB/s) or less - or your speeds are bad at other times of day, then it's almost certainly not our server limiting your speeds. For these users we can do nothing more than alert our ISP (we are in touch with them regularly) and advise the users to ask their ISPs to investigate the speed problem. A small number of ISPs in both Germany and the US have been cropping up repeatedly for our users in this respect. Taking the example of Deutsche Telekom: they and i3D (our ISP) are in agreement that there's a connectivity issue between them but it appears that neither of them own the problem link and neither of them believe it's their responsibility to sort it out (which leaves both you and us in the lurch). It's not unheard of though for an ISP to find and sort out an issue after being contacted by their customer so... what have you got to lose?

LOL what? ok dude whatever. i know this is a late response because its been this long since ive tried to download anything from this site. past 2 hours ive been trying to download a 230MB file and its still showing me over an hour left. been downloading other mods for AC (back into it thanks to the GT career mod by alex mail), every other mod i downloaded from his in game recommended list that took me to drive files, mega upload ect took SECONDS, most of them many times larger then what ive been trying to download on here for the past several HOURS.

Still hardwire gigabit speeds, still every single other download from everywhere downloads as quick as it should, and here we are, still getting less then dial up speeds from your site. hmmm. guess it must still be my ISP. I guess EVERYONE heres ISP just has a grudge against YOUR site and YOUR servers only. I get 10 times faster downloading things through tor...

and as far as your lil comment about not blaming others for your slow speeds, wtf do you think this entire thread itself is? and a simple google search for "race dept download speeds" shows hundreds if not thousands of results on here and elsewhere of people having problems and mods on here claiming its their internet, not a RD issue, so i really dont know who your trying to lie to here.

You would almost think your throttling everyone to a crawl on purpose to push your premium memberships, which as shady as that would be in the 1st place, dont even seem to be the case as theres many reports of people with premium in this thread alone that says even that dont matter. idk what the issue is here. idk if its a problem with your ISP, your server configs, you purposedly throttling speeds or what. all i know is that its apparently been an issue for years and it has yet to be fixed, clearly. you sell premium memberships. you sell adspace. you sell vender memberships. this is clearly a business, not some hobbyist forum board. and yet whoever is in charge of running the site is not interested at all in fixing a basic ongoing issue. telling everyone to "contact their ISP" is not an answer.

imagine people calling up their providers and telling them they cant download from only ONE site out of the entire of the internet at reasonable speeds. they would be laughed off of the phone. if it was a users ISP issue, dont you think that issue would be bound to show up at some other site at some point? as oppose to just one? to me it seems like the common denominator here is RD, and NOT everyone elses ISPs. and by refusing to do anything about it, or acknowledging your at fault, and telling people its their providers fault, and then trying to call out people and call them liars on a public forum that clearly shows otherwise, is not only not very smart, but not exactly the most professional way to run a business. And it sure as hell dont instill alot of confidence for users considering upgrading their accounts, or advertisers or venders to pay for said adspace.

 

[moparhippy420]

BUT I DEMAND EVERYTHING IS FREE, COS I IZ SPECIAL !!1!1

So people expect mods to be made for free, and then hosted on RD for free, and won't even put up with a few ads to help pay for the costs... entitled brats

except for the fact that NOTHING is free, we are paying either by being advertised too, or paying for premium for one. and even with premium the store is still nothing but and advertisment, that if anyone buys from there RD is getting a cut. This is how literally every other website on the internet works, and has always worked. And mods are created by users, by the community, NOT by race dept. So lets get that lil "i demand everything for free" attitude out of here, k?

Second, just because someone isnt paying direct out of their pockets for a service, or mods, does not justify a company (in this case RD because they ARE a company after all) to blame their severely lacking server speeds on the users while being extremely unprofessional and just straight up lying in the forums. Every other website that hosts files for download dont seem to have this problem, so whats the problem here? Saying "its free" isnt exactly an excuse when you can say that about ALL websites and hosting platforms.

Third, its obviously clear that EVEN PAID MEMEBERS are experiencing the same issues. The ones that ARE paying out of pocket, the ones that are NOT getting this content for "free". So, whats your excuse for that? Are the people who are paying not entitled to complain about the service they are paying for either?

Your post makes you sound like either an employee, or a fanboy shill.

 

[RasmusP]

Dude you need to calm down.
RD is not a profit orientated company and we are no customers so apart from the passion and good will of the staff and also the community, there's nothing that drives this site.

And since RD isn't profit orientated, there's also no financial pressure to fix this.
If you want to make it better for people like yourself, join the staff team, work out a finance plan for upgrading the servers and get it done.

The RD team knows that it's an issue that started during the pandemic increase of simracers.
But they have to invest their free time to make things better.

Apparently it's not as easy as many of us think it would be but they at least felt obliged to make things better for the premium members.

It's not like RD wants to gain premium members by limiting bandwidth.
It's rather that they tried to find a solution by splitting the bandwidth to be faster for certain people.

How to determine who's gonna get the better bandwidth? Longer RD members? Premium members? A ranking according to the most downloaded uploads?

For me, premium or not makes the most sense...

Especially since the split between premium and non-premium downloads is probably 5% to 95%.


About calling the ISP thing BS:
There are quite a few people who got premium and the speed was just as bad.
So get Premium, test if speed increases.
If not, contact RD to get a refund because your ISP is the problem.
If yes, decide if you want to keep premium and the benefits or contact RD to get a refund because you only wanted to test Neil's BS post.

 

[Neilski]

i really dont know who your trying to lie to here.

OK, I'm done with you. You can't be bothered to read what I wrote, and you continue to allege that I'm lying. Reply ban for you now.

 

[GeekyDeaks]

I despair at some of the posts in this thread. For anyone bemoaning a slow download, try and remember a few things. First, this is a site for discussion and sharing of ideas/work around a common interest of simracing, not a content delivery platform. Second, when you are facing a long download and you absolutely cannot wait until a less busy time, have a little think about the number of hours the creator of said mod has spent pouring into their work (and then triple it, because you probably underestimated), then compare that to both the time you are waiting and how many hours you have personally spent giving back to the community.

For anyone just coming into this thread, when you see a complaint, look at how many messages the individual has posted outside this thread and gauge for yourself how much they have contributed to the community vs how much they are willing to take from it

rant over....