Slow XBLM, PSN, Itunes Store downloads after 6pm

[#1]

For some reason it seems the xblm sig is not working on pte-ag2 may be both pte's.
i was on pte-ag2 tonight and before i put some hours into cod waw i gave a few streams ago to see if they where still runing smooth and found they would not buffer new ones and old streams.
so jumped on pc to headed for a pcl and ended up with pcl-ag02 and the streams worked straight away.
let me know if you want me to wireshark the diffrent the gateways tomoro/today and see what they come back as.

Quote

Well only diffrence from when i tried with out wireshark is i was on pte-ag1(i think) and changed to pcl-ag01 in beetween testing with wireshark

seems what i was seeing on tuesday wasnt me going 

[#2]

@_CN_
Please, can you also have a look at the traffic for browsing MLB's website (http://mlb.mlb.com/).  It looks like they use the akamai network for their website too.  All the html, and related scripts and images, are coming through with DS field of 0x60, which makes browsing that website (which I do quite a lot) fairly painful in the evening.  Thanks.

[#3]

Morning peeps
Carl's going to reboot the e30 switches at Telehouse East to see if that improves the XBL traffic prioritisation.
Then he's going to look at mlb.tv again - he reckons it's not going to be that easy, because certain content will be delivered via Akamai, which will be difficult to separate.
Then I imagine, he might have a coffee

[#4]

Sounds like it will be a well earned coffee.  He's done a great job getting the mlb.tv streaming working, which is the main thing that would have been a huge pain if he hadn't fixed it.  It would be nice if he can see a way of getting the browsing traffic (from MLB.com) prioritised, but, as it all comes through Akamai, I can see that it may well be tricky.  I will wait to see how he gets on.

[#5]

Hi guys,
Just thought I'd comment on the iTunes Store again. I did a download last night, and it was very slow - 17 minutes per track, and the speed meter was reading around 3-400Kbps. It was also very slow loading the Store pages. Only a little while later, and well before midnight, I installed some Apple Updates, and they came at nearly 7Mbps. My router is connected at 8096/384Kbps (home wireless is at 270Mbps).
Cheers,
Andy.

[#6]

I'm not sure Carl/PN actually plan on fixing the iTunes download speed - recent action in this thread seems to have focussed on streaming only. Indeed, judging from the questions I asked earlier back which were ignored, it seems iTunes is generally a pretty low priority. However, it is worth mentioning that according to James only a subset of PN's products have got the new traffic management rules in place (a subset which doesn't include my BBYW1, hence the lack of testing from me), so perhaps you also aren't included yet.

[#7]

Not true at all Thomas.
We're trying to get a sig for iTunes from Arbor.

[#8]

What does that mean in plain English James, please?
I'm guessing it means you are trying to manage iTunes better than other download protocols?
Regards.
Andy.

[#9]

Andy - Arbor Networks bought Ellacoya, the company who we use to detect what sorts of traffic are being download.
Because iTunes traffic is distrivuted by Akamai, it gets picked up as "download server" and thus rate limited at our end.
We've asdked Arbor Networks to find a way of differentiating iTunes traffic so that it will come down quicker for you guys.

[#10]

Thanks James. It does help to understand.
Just one thought, on my system anyway, iTunes Store is much slower than other downloads at peak times. I can go to places like VersionTracker, or SourceForge, or download OS updates, and get good speeds (i.e. up to 6 or 7 meg.) at similar times of day that I'd use iTunes Store. I'm just puzzled that iTunes Store is so much worse than true 'download' sites, if they're all being treated the same.
Cheers.
Andy.

[#11]

Quote from: Be3G

However, it is worth mentioning that according to James only a subset of PN's products have got the new traffic management rules in place (a subset which doesn't include my BBYW1, hence the lack of testing from me), so perhaps you also aren't included yet.

iTunes has been looked at as part of the other work, currently only applied to BBWY2, Unlimited and Premier 1.  The stats look good so hopefully we can roll to other products next week.

[#12]

Quote from: Jameseh

Not true at all Thomas. We're trying to get a sig for iTunes from Arbor.

I know that James, you said that a week or so ago... but when I then asked a further couple of questions, they seemed to fall on deaf ears. However, you may have answered them with this...

Quote from: Jameseh

Because iTunes traffic is distrivuted by Akamai, it gets picked up as "download server" and thus rate limited at our end. We've asdked Arbor Networks to find a way of differentiating iTunes traffic so that it will come down quicker for you guys.

...so I'd just like to clarify, are PN intending to speed up iTunes downloads, or just streaming - and if the downloads are sped up, what speed should we expect to see for them (i.e. line speed or something else)?

[#13]

We're trying to get it so the streaming is handled as streaming traffic and music downloads are in gold, but rate limited as per download servers.
So we'll get it treated roperly first and then look at what sort of quantities of traffic we're seeing before taking further action.

[#14]

Right, so what (if any) practical difference will the gold rating of downloads make if they're still subject to the same rate limiting? (I've never quite completely understood the interaction between rate limiting and 'metallic' priorities, and what the effect of one is on the other...) Also, did you mean to separate out music downloads - implying larger film/TV downloads will be subject to different traffic management?

[#15]

You should see the advertised limits, rather than the poorer speeds that you have been seeing