Speeding Up Common Downloads

[Animator 0]

I am yet another dialup user.

Someone was asking about whether bittorrent was the same as flashget. No.

• 
  
• Flashget is a download accelerator (there are others like netants, getright etc) which speeds up downloads by splitting the file into separate sections, and then arranging multiple connections to the download at the same time, once fir each "piece". While there is a max speed per download stream (not necessarily at your computer), it is still possible to have a number of simultaneous streams going at the same time! Thus, you get the file quicker in multiple pieces.
  
• Bittorrent is, as someone else said, peer-to-peer networking. Instead of downloading just from an internet site, you are actually downloading files from computers of other people who have what you are after (piracy is rife, and viruses tend to get passed around very quickly). It also utilises piece-by-piece downloads, pulling parts from a number of different uers who may have what you are after. Bittorrent can also detect whose connection (to you) is the fastest (as can some of the download accelerators mentioned above) so you generally get good performance times. Bittorrent does not require you to have to be uploading at the same time as you are trying to download.
  

When I used to use Windows (Linux now, for years) there were some programs available which really helped speed up modem performance. Some look impressive in that they appear to speed up webpages, but this is just a trick. While you are reading one page, they are thinking ahead about what you might click next and downloading all links ahead of time. Actual speed can be gained by programs that allow you to configure MTU settings and the like... those ones can indeed improve your performance greatly! Experiment by all means, but be aware that setting your modem to think it's faster than it reall is will more likely slow you down, as various packets will end up getting missed.

Now that I use Linux I don't have a common download accelerator like I used to for windows. I use the wget command where I have discovered a great way to speed up painful downloads through command line...

Whereas I would normally type...

wget -c theirsite.com/myfile/

(the -c tells wget to pick up the file from half way if it was already partially downloaded... the default would otherwise be to start from the beginning all over again)

I now use...

wget -c -t 0 -T 10 theirsite.com/myfile/

The -t is the number of retries to allow for if a file times out, Setting to zero means "keep going" (unlimited)
The -T is the number of seconds to allow a download to be held up before issuing wget's own timeout and starting a new stream.

On dialup, I often find that the download kind of pauses lots and then just dies. It is as if they are tired of sending me the file at my slow speed. With the extra -T set to 10, my connection keeps reinstating any time there is a ten second lag and I end up at least getting my large files in the morning instead of waking up to find them on hold.

If only it worked with rapidshare.

Edited October 16, 2016 by OpaQue (see edit history)

[Maxfelgar 0]

I'm currently downloading something, and it's only going at an average of about 50 KB per second. I have a computer with 3 GB of RAM and 320 Harddrive, so I have a feeling it should be going a lot faster. So far, every download I've done (and I've done a lot) has been capped at 75 KB/s. I don't know it's because of the download site itself, or if it's my computer. I'm really bad at technical stuff, so any help anyone can give would be awesome. My main question is if it's my computer or my download site. If you have any other tips on how to speed up downloads, that'd be great too.-Max

[toby 0]

Probably your internet, or the site you're downloading it from. I've had downloads of over 1mb/s from M$ one time, then like 50 kb/s another time, even BBC ranges from 20 to 600 kbps.

[LegallyHigh 0]

I've used Download Accelerators for large fies and they work great. Using Download Accelerator is sort of like using Bit Torrent in the sense that instead of using one connection to a host for the file you are using multiple connections and you are downloading the file in chunks. However, with Download Accelerators you are downloading the file using multiple connections to the same host, where as Bit Torrent uses multiple connections, each to a varoious different host. I've used DAP (Download Accelerator Pro) before and it heavily increased my Download Speeds, however, my Spyware program said it was Malware, so I got rid of it. Can any one recommend another good Download Accelerator to me? I download game demos alot (they tend to be 1+ Gig Files) so I could use the speed.