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I placed an order today (#675725) for a PDF from the Paizo webstore, and the download time is outrageous! 4+ hours to download a 59.1MB file from a store that sells PDFs? I should have just spent the extra dollar and bought from RPGNow. I buy PDFs fairly regularly, but I doubt I'll be buying any more from Paizo unless things speed up significantly.
If you can't support the PDF downloads on your current infrastructure, you either need to upgrade ASAP, or stop selling PDFs. Download times of this length are horrible customer service.
Rich
I placed an order today (#675725) for a PDF from the Paizo webstore, and the download time is outrageous! 4+ hours to download a 59.1MB file from a store that sells PDFs? I should have just spent the extra dollar and bought from RPGNow. I buy PDFs fairly regularly, but I doubt I'll be buying any more from Paizo unless things speed up significantly.
If you can't support the PDF downloads on your current infrastructure, you either need to upgrade ASAP, or stop selling PDFs. Download times of this length are horrible customer service.
Rich
Rich, are you sure it's the Paizo servers.... I've downloaded several PDFs from Paizo, and never had an issue with the download times, it was never more than a few minutes even for the really big Planescape pdfs.
- Ashavan
Yeah, that is slow. I haven't had problems downloading either. The time that you are talking about seems like dial-up speed, not a high speed connection. You might want to try testing your download speed.
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Yeah, that is slow. I haven't had problems downloading either. The time that you are talking about seems like dial-up speed, not a high speed connection. You might want to try testing your download speed.
The problem is definitly coming from the other end, as I tried it on both my work PC (where I'm on a university network, on a 100 Mbps connection, as I work in the IT department). I also tried it from home a few hours later on a different PC on a DSL connection (network speed tests at 3.7 Mbps), and got the same result (a little bit slower, but still 4+ hours for my file to download). I download other, much larger files from other servers throughout the day as part of my job, and had nowhere near the same speed issues at any time today.
I had the same problem 2 weeks ago with the Savage Tide Player's Guide but figured it was because so many people were hitting it at once, so I didn't think much of it. But I wasn't expecting the same performance hit on purchased PDFs.
Rich
Chief Technical Officer
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I usually have the high download speeds as well, but the supplements I tried to DL today were going to take over 2 hours. This has never happened before though :)
Tuesday is usually a heavy bandwidth day, as that's when we send out our weekly e-mails; Wednesday gets a lot of carryover, too.
Even with that knowledge, I'm seeing odd patterns in our bandwidth charts over the last few days that I haven't figured out what to make of yet. Yesterday still wasn't as bad as the day we put up the Savage Tide Player's Guide, though.
A major bandwidth upgrade is in the budget for early next year.
-Vic.
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*grrrrr*
My Greyhawk Setting (ADD 1st edition) will take between 11 and 23 hours to download at 2kb/sec for 80-ishMb!? My toast.net speed has been at 3Mb/sec or more for years, but Paizo's site and boards have always loaded slow for me. And now this...
This is an unacceptable transfer rate for a publishing company. Do you have any updates on why this is happening? Should I cancel my download and try at a different time? I don't want to lose the time already invested if this is the transfer rate I can expect for the near future.
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Chief Technical Officer
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We're not currently experiencing any unusual bandwidth issues, but it's possible some router between us and you is flaking out.
I've heard of a problem where a client's connection speed, which normally varies up and down over time, gets into a mode where it only varies downward, and you end up with terrible speeds. (Unfortunately, I just went looking for some details on that, and can't seem to find anything.)
While you "should" be able to hit stop and try again, I can understand your hesitation to give up on the current download.
I'd suggest you fire up a different browser and try downloading another copy of the file (simultaneously). If it's better, kill the slow one.
-Vic.
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Personally I've seen download speeds vary drastically over the course of the day. I find that trying to start downloads between say 10 am and 6 pm Eastern time (US) is very difficult; I assume the site is getting heavily hit from people accessing it at work like me, and as such the servers are possibly under heavier load. Mornings (say 6 to 7 am Eastern) and later evenings (after 10 PM Eastern) my speeds pick up relatively nicely...right now I'm downloading the 1E World of Greyhawk setting mentioned above and I'm cruising at around 36 KB/s, which is reasonable.
I don't have any good suggestions or thoughts other than the time based ones I mentioned above...I'm generally a patient person, and while I'm downloading I either print a previous download or read over stuff like the Slaver's modules...
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Luckily, I am patient as well, and simply did other things until the download finished. Since I was AFK at the time, I am not sure how long it ended up taking, but the download finished by the time of this posting.
I didn't think to tracert during the download but I will run a few tests over the next several days and post the results here. It could well be that a router somewhere is having trouble, which makes it seem like the site has bandwidth issues.
Heh! On a whim, I stopped typing this message and tried to download the file again. I got all 83 Mb in about 5 seconds with a transfer rate of 16.5Mb/sec!! That is one of the fastest transfer rates I have ever received on any file transfer...
OK, now I am quite puzzled. I do not think the bottleneck is local (on or near my end) since I have fiber to my house and consistently get screaming speeds (3+Mb/sec without fail). As I run my business from home, I am keenly aware of my download rate and know that I am not experiencing degraded bandwidth in general on this end. And according to Vic, the bottleneck is not known to be on Paizo's end. Using my brilliant powers of deduction, the problem therefore lies between us (I am in Ohio, not sure where your server is) so I will still do some testing, running some tracert's at various times using the predicited 83Mb file as a benchmark case.
For the average user that runs into terribly slow downloads, it may be worth your while to cancel and try again at a different time.
Vic - thank you for taking the time to reply, and I apologize for assuming the issues were with your servers. Lesson learned!
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Chief Technical Officer
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...I assume the site is getting heavily hit from people accessing it at work like me, and as such the servers are possibly under heavier load.
We added a couple of new servers a month or so ago, and I'm pleased to report that we're no longer near maximum load on that front.
Our increased bandwidth order is finally in process (originally having been scheduled for February with a vendor who flaked out on us). It should give us the breathing room we need during peaks.
-Vic.
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...I assume the site is getting heavily hit from people accessing it at work like me, and as such the servers are possibly under heavier load.We added a couple of new servers a month or so ago, and I'm pleased to report that we're no longer near maximum load on that front.
Our increased bandwidth order is finally in process (originally having been scheduled for February with a vendor who flaked out on us). It should give us the breathing room we need during peaks.
-Vic.
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Very cool.
I haven't had any complaints, really...I ordered a load of PDFs on...Thursday?...and really had very little trouble downloading them after 5 or 6 PM. Not at all trying to point a finger in any direction...I'm just glad I can finally get my hands on the 1E and 2E stuff I want/am missing for game use without spending an arm and a leg on eBay or anything...yes, it'd be nice to have the original printings from a collection standpoint, but I'd hate to mark them up like I can the downloaded and printed PDF files :-)