Low PTR Download Rate? Seeking Advice

[Rekthed]

Okay, so I just started to download the PTR and noticed that during setup my download rate was normal, around 1 mb/s. However once it hit the 2nd step it dropped to a low 150 kb/s average. I have all the ports opened and nothing else is taking away my bandwith. Would anyone know why this might be? Thanks!

[vesseblah]

Try turn off p2p from the downloader options. Improved my download speed of Cata beta from 200k/s to 4200k/s. Kept it off ever since.

[Rekthed]

What exactly does it do? the Peer-to-Peer option?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT - Turn off the P2P and it shot up to back over 1 mb/s idk what it does, but atm i like it being off.

[Xuvial]

Try turn off p2p from the downloader options. Improved my download speed of Cata beta from 200k/s to 4200k/s. Kept it off ever since.

I thought P2P was supposed to drastically increase the speeds due to downloading bits of data from multiple sources at the same time. While the Blizzard HTTP server provides the main bandwidth, the peers can add a lot to the overall speed.

What exactly does it do? the Peer-to-Peer option?

Downloads parts of the file from other people who already have it. E.g. my HTTP download goes at ~700kbps, but lots of peers help bump it up by another 300kbps.

[Lagwin]

I thought P2P was supposed to drastically increase the speeds due to downloading bits of data from multiple sources at the same time. While the Blizzard HTTP server provides the main bandwidth, the peers can add a lot to the overall speed.


Downloads parts of the file from other people who already have it. E.g. my HTTP download goes at ~700kbps, but lots of peers help bump it up by another 300kbps.

Well in theory thats what its suposed to do but since the blizz P2P dosnt allow any controll over upload/download rates you end up with shit speeds because of the amount of data you are uploading to others....on torrent P2P you can controll it enough to take the upload speed down by 20% and you get the full download speed.

[Xuvial]

Well in theory thats what its suposed to do but since the blizz P2P dosnt allow any controll over upload/download rates you end up with shit speeds because of the amount of data you are uploading to others....on torrent P2P you can controll it enough to take the upload speed down by 20% and you get the full download speed.

Hmm good point.
Well, depends where you live really. Here in NZ it's most beneficial to have as many peers going as possible, the uploads don't have such a big impact on my d/s speed so it's worth keeping P2P on. But that's just for me...

@ Rekthed, people are in a huge rush to get the PTR so it could explain why the HTTP server could be struggling to provide consistent speeds. A lot more people will have the first part than the second part, maybe your peers are giving you the boosted speeds for the first part? Still doesn't explain dropping from 1000kbps to 150kbps though :S

[vesseblah]

I thought P2P was supposed to drastically increase the speeds due to downloading bits of data from multiple sources at the same time.

Blizzard has braindead piece of shit p2p implementation in their download client.Even after hundreds of posts in technical support forums as well as beta forums they still don't get it and still havent fixed it. Without capped upload speed, p2p will saturate nearly all home internet connections. Regular ADSL and cable modem are very asymmetrical. If you upload at 100% speed, your download drops to around 20% of maximum, the split is always less than 150% of the real bandwidth. So if you want to download at 100% speed, you should set upload to about 20-50% of your theoretical maximum.

Since blizz downloader always use 100% of upload if needed, it kills download speeds unless you have symmetrical line (like 10/10 or 100/100mbps where both directions are equally fast and not shared). Completely disabling p2p forces whole download from HTTP, but doing traffic shaping with some external tools like NetLimiter would do the trick. Anyway, direct download from HTTP is very fast now, since Blizz has started using Akamai for distribution I think there's Aussie mirror too for Akamai, and you should check it out if you can get better speed with direct download now with Cata if you last time checked it in previous expansion.

[Deleted]

Well in theory thats what its suposed to do but since the blizz P2P dosnt allow any controll over upload/download rates you end up with shit speeds because of the amount of data you are uploading to others....on torrent P2P you can controll it enough to take the upload speed down by 20% and you get the full download speed.

No, the issue is that the blizzard downloader does not have seeds.

Once a client is done, its immediately disconnected. This leaves the available upload bandwidth in short supply because the only ones connected are those seeking data, and their limited data restricts the amount of uploading they can do as well.

Its a fundamentally flawed implementation of the Bit Torrent protocol and idea.

[vesseblah]

No, the issue is that the blizzard downloader does not have seeds.

Wrong. They have Akamai as HTTP source if all else fails. Problem is the fucked up traffic shaping for asymmetrical home lines. Download speeds are crap on patch days too, even if there are million people seeding. This was very easy to verify too back in the old days. Using blizz downloader I could get some 200-300k/s speed out of big patches, but loading up the patch torrent into uTorrent where traffic shaping is possible, it easily went up to 3000k/s speed and above.

[Deleted]

Wrong. They have Akamai as HTTP source if all else fails.

Which is constantly overloaded and thus suffers from low throughput per user.

I can't get anywhere near the capability of my 100/100 line using the blizzard torrent client. I can however saturate it with ease using proper bit torrent implementations where there are larger quantities of seeders and other upload contributors available.

[nwo]

P2P is retarded, I don't even know why that option is there to be honest... I guess it could be useful when Blizzard's servers are slowed to a crawl but still...

I just turned off P2P and my download went up from ~300KB/s to 900KB/s.

I wish that when you have P2P enabled you could download from Blizzard's servers as well as other users

[vesseblah]

Problem is at your end then. I get full speed out of my 40mbps cable (around 4300k/s) with both uTorrent using traffic shaping as well as direct download with p2p disabled straight from Akamai mirror. Never could get anywhere close to maximum speed using the regular blizz downloader with p2p enabled.

---------- Post added 2011-01-18 at 03:30 AM ----------

I wish that when you have P2P enabled you could download from Blizzard's servers as well as other users

It does, but blizzard's fucktard p2p client sucks your download bandwidth with uncapped upload as said before. You can see in the downloader client's details list of download sources connected to you, and it does always include the direct HTTP as well.

[Xuvial]

I wish that when you have P2P enabled you could download from Blizzard's servers as well as other users

I was under the assumption that's exactly what P2P already does.
I get about ~700kbps from Blizzard and 5-15kbps from 10-20+ peers (depending on time of day).

[Deleted]

Problem is at your end then. I get full speed out of my 40mbps cable (around 4300k/s) with both uTorrent using traffic shaping as well as direct download with p2p disabled straight from Akamai mirror. Never could get anywhere close to maximum speed using the regular blizz downloader with p2p enabled.[COLOR="red"]

What you're seeing the effects of is a better torrent management (particularly, it often handles a lot more peers). The blizzard one actually is capped - but it seems to have some really bizzare capping algorithms.

ADSL lines are divided into separate upload and download frequencies. You can (normally) saturate them both at the same time. You will naturally experience inconvenient latencies; but throughput should not be affected. (unless your ISP is absolutly crap)