Try 2! Apple Store Wi-Fi has no caching server. Connection to Apple main/core network throttled!? Backup network speed is TERRIBLY slow.

So, I'm at an Apple Store (Union Square). The Apple Store Wi-Fi (according to fast.com) is 100Mbps (exactly!) But some software and data downloads from Apple are absurdly slow. Anyone else noticed this?

I suspect some kind of low quality throttling system to prevent any one IP from downloading "too much" due to a bug is being triggered when it shouldn't be. Downloads of MacOS are fine. Average around 13MB/s for Sierra 10.12 dmg for the first 2GB, steadily more or less saturating the link. But then it became very choppy. Would expect things to slow due to others using it, but not be so choppy - often dropping to < 1MB/s. (e.g. 229K/s).

Importantly, downloading the latest iOS to a new iPhone took most of an hour. Which is what caused me to investigate and get the data in this post. Apple has a system for making downloads available on corporate lans over a local caching server. Right? I know Microsoft does. Right. Apple does too. Whatever they have here, it's not working.

Separate, but related issue. My restore from iCloud is also going absurdly slowly. Looks like it'll take about 19 hours. After half an hour, the thermometer is basically a little blue square. After an hour, at least its giving me an estimate. 19 hours. 19 hours. 19 HOURS. => 20 hours. => "About 1 day" While fast.com shows 88 to 120 Mbps. But I would expect caching wouldn't speed that up. And icloud.com shows my device's icloud backup is only 10.7 GB. There's no good reason it should take "About 1 day" !!! It should not be that much slower than the 5GB iOS download was. (And the iOS download should be from a caching server and thus MUCH faster!

It seems like this store doesn't have Content caching set up. "Content caching is a service in macOS that speeds up downloading of software distributed by Apple and data that users store in iCloud by saving content that local Apple devices have already downloaded." Maybe it doesn't support iOS?

I am trying downloading the latest iOS to my mac - iPhone11,8_17.3_21D50_Restore.ipsw -

I'ts starting out fast and steady. At least 10MB/s. As high as 15MB/s. Interesting. It seems fast.com is prioritized over the iOS download - it slows to 0MB/s (4.14KB/s) while a fast.com test is running. It's clearly not downloading from a caching server; this proves it. The overall download speed to my Mac is OK - 6.93G at an average of 8.53MB/s in 13m 38s. I wonder why it downloaded so slowly to the new iPhone.

(post disappeared - putting back but this copy doesn't have the links (to apple dot com)