Slow update and missing Quick Connect

Hi,
I've just tried and I don't see any download performance issue. Where are you located? By the way we use the CDN so the region should not be a problem.

Regards

I'm located in New Zealand. It is back to normal today. Yesterday was extremely slow to download (both installer and auto-update) from multiple machines.

Trying to download the latest beta update today on multiple PCs in 2 different networks and the download is running slow again.

They are trying to download from 152.195.35.17

We use the CDN provided by Microsoft Azure (Verizon) according the point-of-presence (POP) list they have servers in Auckland, New Zealand. Why you are mapping to an IP range assigned in the US is very odd. The only thing I can think of is the POP had expired its content and was forced to reload from the US. This would cause the first download to be slower but subsequent downloads should be faster (30-45 seconds range).

POP List: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cdn/cdn-pop-locations

If you try today, what does the speed look like?

I've tried downloading from work and from home several times. Last night for both from work and from home, I had one fast download and the rest of the tries were slow downloads. I've tried using both wifi and ethernet and tested on different PCs. I'm using Internet Download Manager to accelerate my downloads, but have also tried using Firefox and Chrome's built-in download manager to see if it was an application issue or not. The issue is still there regardless. IDM accelerates the download quite a bit, but it is still slow. I've only recently started experiencing this issue.

A fast download for me would be something like 10 MB/s, and a slow one will be something like 180~250 KB/s. Note that Internet Download Manager displays MB and KB and not Mb and Kb.

This morning, I'm getting a fast download and it's grabbing from the same IP as last night (and previous times):









Update:


Just got back home and did another test. Download came from the same IP and here's my speed:







I'm getting 23 MB/s, which is good. But it's just odd that from 2 different networks, I either get slow or fast downloads and it is consistent. So I doubt it's a network related issue on my side.

Happened again today. Just tried to download the latest beta and both the app update and download from default browser (Firefox) goes super slow at around 35KB/s. I then tried to use IDM (Internet Download Manager) to download, which speeds up a bit, but nowhere near the 23 MB/s that I was getting (see screenshot from my last post).

I'm testing this from home, haven't tested office network yet. Aside from my router (with no explicit firewall rules), I don't have anything blocking the traffic or anything like that. I'm on a 200 Mb/s down and 20 Mb/s up plan. Here's my SpeedTest result (tested 5 times, this is the average). I'm on Ethernet connection and it is stable (look at the graph):

I think we have two issues at play here, none of which are under your control.

We use an Azure Blob Storage to store the file (original file is located in the USA). Then to speed up downloads, we use an Azure CDN service to distribute the file around the world (endpoints).

- we don't pre-load the files to the CDN endpoints
- the file expires and is cleared from the endpoints after 7 days

I've changed (this morning) the expiry to 90 days for .exe/.msi/.zip files (30 days for all other file types) and will look at the possibility of pre-loading the endpoints.

The other option is to get more people in New Zealand using and updating RDM ;-)

Have a look, for fun, at Auckland traffic over 24 hours vs All Edge Nodes

Best regards,

Thanks for your reply Stefane.

If I understand this correctly, the reason for my slow download was because the file was downloaded from USA and not from the other endpoints (say one located in NZ)? If that's the case, it would make sense.

But what still doesn't check out is that both the slow and fast downloads came from the same source (152.195.35.17). If you take a look at my screenshots where I've had good download speeds, it was from 152.195.35.17. If it was downloaded from an endpoint in NZ, wouldn't the source IP be different?

And it looks like every time I have a slow download, it is on the same day as when the latest version got released. If I were to download it a day later, it will go back to a fast download. Last night, it was slow. Tonight, it's back to normal speed again. Tested at work this morning and it is OK too.

It's not a major issue, just first world problems :P

Correct.

Why, from the same IP, are you getting fast and slow downloads speeds? My guess is that since the endpoint is loading the file from the USA prior to send it to you, the bytes are slow to arrive to the endpoint then it sends them to you. If it redirects you to USA, it wouldn't be able to cache the file.

I would like to do a test, I could prepare 3 files:

- file in the CDN that I will preload
- file in the CDN that is not preloaded
- file NOT in the CDN located in the USA

Let me know if you don't mind testing these out for me.

Best regards,

If you want to test here are the 3 links:


https://cdn.devolutions.net/download/temp/cdntest/Devolutions.RemoteDesktopManager.Bin.13.0.15.0.A.zip
https://cdn.devolutions.net/download/temp/cdntest/Devolutions.RemoteDesktopManager.Bin.13.0.15.0.B.zip
https://cdndevolutions.blob.core.windows.net/download/temp/cdntest/Devolutions.RemoteDesktopManager.Bin.13.0.15.0.C.zip

Thanks Stefan, looks like that was it!

A - Fast download (11 MB/s). Note I'm using "MB" as this is what is reported by Internet Download Manager (the tool I'm using to download files).
B - Slow, around ~230 KB/s.
C - Slow, around 1.7 MB/s.

Very interesting numbers.

A - Cache hit
B - Cache miss
C - Direct download

I'm actually very surprised at the discrepancy between B & C. I would expect that B be slightly slower than C since it has to first download from the same URL as C, cache the file locally and then hand it off to you but 7x slower, wow crazy.

So, in conclusion, preloading the endpoints would alleviate the slowness issues.

This has not yet been automated but I did preload v13.0.16.0 & v13.0.17.0 last night.

Getting around 300KB/s download in IDM again. Don't think I'm getting a cache hit. Was the latest beta preloaded?

No it was not, I need to get around automating the preload. Still on my to-do list.

I see....thought something was wrong on my end. No worries then.