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Slow download speeds or issues downloading VOD files

← Troubleshooting
We want to make sure you're always able to download the products you've purchased, but this is the Internet, and connection problems can happen.  There are generally three possible explanations:
  1. Your local network or ISP is having a DNS or routing-related problem reaching our server;
  2. Our file isn't being served by our high-performance edge servers, and is instead being served from the slower storage at Amazon S3.
  3. There is some bottleneck happening "upstream" from your ISP, between your ISP and our download servers.

Slow download speeds


Our Content Delivery Network of choice, EdgeCast is one of the largest CDNs in the world, and in most cases will serve our large files as quickly as your Internet connection / ISP will allow. 

If your downloads are going unusually slow or failing, it typically means the large file you're attempting to download is not being served from our high performance cache, but is instead being served through Amazon S3 - which is generally slower than the edge servers. Or, there is some traffic or disruption happening between your ISP and EdgeCast.

Due to the complexity of the Internet and the way the servers are connected to each other, and your download is served along several "hops" along the network path, each one of those hops adds another potential point of failure. Unfortunately, diagnosing these issues is tricky, and isn't something we can easily do ourselves, but with these tests we can do our best.

Click here for some diagnostic steps you can try! Send the results to us via a Help Ticket and we'll pass them along to EdgeCast.


Downloads being dropped / server disconnecting

1. Make sure it's not your network (or computer) first!


Check to see if you're using any Internet Security programs, such as BitDefender, which can sometimes interrupt a download. 

Try power cycling your router or modem (turning them off and on again, for you IT Crowd fans). Sometimes, a weak or flaky connection - especially on a wireless router - can cause downloads to halt. If your ISP is having network-related trouble, this can cause "server not found" errors; a reboot of your cable modem may fix this. If it doesn't, continue to Step 2.

All Internet connections rely on what's called DNS. This stands for "Domain Name System" and is essentially a phone book for websites. Our website is part of a global network of servers, and this DNS "phone book" helps your web browser know exactly which servers it needs to talk to in order to get the file you want to download. Sometimes, parts of the connection pathway can have this DNS information garbled or just plain missing -- your cable modem, your wireless router, even the network routing hardware at your provider - may need to refresh their DNS lookup data for a specific site or website server address, and rebooting your hardware can ensure your network has access to the most up-to-date information. (For more detailed information on DNS, see this Wiki article.)

If rebooting your modem or router fails to solve the issue, please try the steps above, especially "traceroute" and "MTR Record."


2. Try the wget, MTR, or traceroute tests from our diagnostics article here.


Those tests will give some visibility into the network conditions between your computer and our servers, and what might be preventing your downloads from completing. For instance if it looks like a "hop" in the middle of the network path is having problems (Level3 or some other "backbone" provider for the web) then there might not be much we can do, but you might contact your ISP to see if they can do anything, such as temporarily reroute their traffic to another backbone.


3. If all else fails, send us an email.


Perhaps there is a configuration problem on our servers, or a file not properly being held in the cache, etc.

Submit a Help ticket and we'll check into it as soon as possible. 

At the very least, we will need: 


1. Your IP address 
2. The full URL and filename of the file you are attempting to download. 

Failure to include these in your email could cause a delay in your ticket being resolved. You can find your IP address easily by visiting ipmonkey.com.

We highly recommend going through the troubleshooting steps above (running ping, traceroute, using wget, or collecting MTR) and then attaching those as text files, or copying-and-pasting them into your Help ticket.

For more information on troubleshooting network/routing issues with MTR and traceroute, see this in-depth explainer at Digital Ocean.

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