Slow websites

[Steve]

It really irritates me that, now I have an 8Mb connection to the world wide web, I can still only download videos from Galaxy FM Yorkshire's website at 46KB/s.

Its not my connection, I know this because I can download a song from Itunes servers in under 5 seconds, which is basically maxxing out my connection, at something like 600KB/s, about THIRTEEN TIMES faster than Galaxy Yorkshire.

There are plenty of other websites out there with very slow downloads. IMO, there should be a standard, whereby a website should only be able to offer video and audio downloads if they can meet certain upload speeds from their servers.

 

[Trazor]

So all websites that do not meet your exacting standards should be banned from offering a service......

The need for speed........and when the norm is 600KB/s, will you moan when its not 2400 KB/s.....

 

[Karl Austin]

It's all down to:

1) How many other people are trying to download
2) The distance the server is from you in network terms
3) If the server can cope in terms of CPU/RAM/Disk IO

The servers will most likely have 100Mbit/s connections, it's just that a lot of people will probably be downloading OR they are artificially limiting the speed, to keep their costs down.

 

[Steve]

I just think that if a website is ofering downloads, it should have sufficient capacity to at least stream the media without long waits for buffering and pausing for re-buffering, even at busy times.

 

[clf-gas]

I just think that if a website is ofering downloads, it should have sufficient capacity to at least stream the media without long waits for buffering and pausing for re-buffering, even at busy times.

You should sit behind my steam fired lap top then think two days behind

 

[gcol]

Ah the impatience of youth.

 

[Karl Austin]

I just think that if a website is ofering downloads, it should have sufficient capacity to at least stream the media without long waits for buffering and pausing for re-buffering, even at busy times.

Unfortunately, if you knew what was involved, you wouldn't be saying that. If they had to make it so that there was enough bandwidth at peak times for every user to obtain a set speed, then you'd have to empty your wallet (and bank account more than likely) to pay for the service.

Contrary to most peoples perception, the Internet isn't free, bandwidth isn't free, and the equipment to make it all work, certainly isn't free - For a small pair of decent routers, to route around 3Gbit/s you're talking upwards of £65,000.

-- Skip if you're not in to maths and possibly being bored --

For anyone interested in how to work out how much bandwidth is required to satisfy a specific demand, here goes:

((TZ * 8192) / (1 / ((1 / TT) + ( 1 / TS))) / 1000)

Where:

TZ = The size of the item in MB
TT = The target time in seconds in which you want the download to finish
TS = How often on average a new download is started

That gives you an answer in Mbit/s for how much bandwidth you need.

So for example:

TZ = 3.5MB (Average size of an MP3)
TT = 180s - 3 Minutes (If we were streaming it real time)
TS = 2s (Every 2s someone starts listening)

((3.5 * 8192) / (1 / ((1 / 180) + ( 1 / 2))) / 1000)

= 14.5Mbit/s

This is all of course based on averages, unfortunately the real world doesn't play by averages, so whilst on average you may have a download starting every 2s, in reality it'll be something like a download starting ever 0.25s at peak times and 4s+ at off-peak etc. which makes things a little different.

 

[bernardgreen]

For anyone interested in how to work out how much bandwidth is required to satisfy a specific demand, here goes:

((TZ * 8192) / (1 / ((1 / TT) + ( 1 / TS))) / 1000)

Anymore of that type of talk and I will start talking about Erlangs......

and grade of service.......