Problems downloading even the smallest of videos

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:01 pm

Now i'm not sure if it's the network i'm on or that there might be problems with any of the org servers, but i can't seem to download even the smallest of videos (just a few minutes a 6MB video failed to finish). I'm on a university (read "packet shaped to hell") connection, but in the past i have been able to get plenty of videos without any problems. I'm using Firefox because i assumed Mozilla was to blame, but the problem continues despite the change in browser.

The problem manifests itself in the download stopping abrubtly without any error message or even an acnowledgement of the fact that it stopped (speed goes to 0k/sec i'm assuming) and pausing/restartign does nothing as does canceling and retrying the video -- in the later case, it simply starts the DL from the begining. Often i cannot try to get anotehr video for quite some time, but i have always been able to download smaller (50MB or less) videos fine. If it's of any importance, most transfers die at about the same place for each video.

If anyone could help me i'd be very grateful.

Org Profile · Post by **GloryQuestor** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 11:54 am

It's not just you, Bashar. I had problems and some lag (and occasional pauses) when uploading and downloading videos.

Does anyone know if it's related to the server move Phade was talking about in ]this thread?

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:57 pm

I've had problems downloading anything over 50MB for the last few months, though. And speeds are always capping out at 60 to 70 k/sec. If there was something i was doing wrong, i'd like to know... it seems like i can't DL videos at all any more (or it takes 10 attempts for smaller ones to finally work).

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 5:59 pm

Use a download manager like FlashGet. With any videos on the new Kero server you should be able to use download managers no problem and they should resume fine.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:29 pm

AbsoluteDestiny wrote:Use a download manager like FlashGet. With any videos on the new Kero server you should be able to use download managers no problem and they should resume fine.

Interesting. I assume the software configuration on kero allows for this. Is there any reason why the old server couldnt be configured the same way?

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 9:18 pm

AbsoluteDestiny wrote:Use a download manager like FlashGet. With any videos on the new Kero server you should be able to use download managers no problem and they should resume fine.

Is the standard Firefox download mannager sufficient? I'm still having issues with that one though o.o;; The problem is that the videos are timing out (or something allong those lines) so they can't be resumed, only canceled and restarted again, where they die unless i constantly pause and resume them every 20 seconds or so untill the video is completed.

Videos hosted off site and many other downloads i routienely make don't have this problem. In fact, the only other place this seems to happen to me is on IRC (some XDCC bots will connect, drop the connections, and reconnect several times).

Are there minimum speed requirements for downloads that are possibly causing my packed shaped and NATted campus network to disconnect from the system ? (or possibly other problems stemming from the packet shaping and NAT firewall) Others here are begining to have the same problem, and now i'm really stressing. Is there anything that can be done so I may regain downloading ability?

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:56 am

Firefox can resume but FlashGet is more suitable for the purpose.

@Zarx - I don't know you'd have to ask derobert.

YouTube · Post by **derobert** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:55 am

Zarxrax wrote:Interesting. I assume the software configuration on kero allows for this. Is there any reason why the old server couldnt be configured the same way?

Eventually, maybe. Right now, Nago runs phade's old download-through-php code where each connection is fairly resource-heavy. It also requires .org cookies to download.

The biggest reason that nago can't run the new stuff is that the new stuff requires apache2 and Nago has apache1. I don't particularly want to port mod_pancake to apache1.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:05 pm

Okay, i got FlashGet and integrated it with Firefox... everything was going fine for a little while (although retries were about 50 to 60 by the time the videos were at 50%). Then the speeds on the 2 videos i was getting dropped to 0.02k/sec and the number of retries skyrocketted to about 700. one video was at 56% and the other was at 96%.

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:15 pm

sounds like connection timeouts to the server... read the server messages in flashget.