Slow Downloads on Comcast Business Class / ISP Throttling?

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Level 1

45 points

Slow Downloads on Comcast Business Class / ISP Throttling?

I've recently run into a problem with Comcast Business Class where traffic gets "hung" while traveling through level3.net. Specifically, iTunes content takes forever to download and previews are unable to "buffer" in order for me to preview music.

When performing a traceroute to deploy.akamaitechnologies.com, I see that traffic once again gets stuck at level3.net. Anyone else running into this problem?

Mac Pro "Harpertown" and 1st Gen Unibody MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Previous: 1st Gen G4 12 PB, Dual 867 G4, PB 3400, Performa 6115CD, IIsi

Posted on Oct 20, 2010 9:15 AM

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Answer 1

al256

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2010 5:41 PM in response to DSHJ

I downloaded today's media event from iTunes and it took well over an hour with speeds of 89KB/s... I expect at least 500KB/s to 1.5MB/s of speed. With DSL I at least had ~300KB/s of stable speed. I did not trace the problem down but when downloading the new MacTracker I achieved speeds of 1.6MB/s on my Comcast home account. Something's wrong somewhere.. Just letting you know you're not the only one.

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Answer 2

Nov 23, 2010 1:11 PM in response to DSHJ

Seeing the same issue on my residential Comcast. My 20Mb connection is taking 2+ hours to download a 1.5GB movie, which my Speedtest iPhone client benchmarks 17Mb down and 4.7Mb up. Why is none of that available for my iTunes download? Could be Apple/Akamai's issue, but I suspect Comcast is explicitly messing with iTunes downloads.

Any way to prove this? If they are, it should make the press.

Jason

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Answer 3

Dec 9, 2010 9:42 AM in response to Jason Titus

I've been corresponding with Apple iTunes for over a week now to try to figure out why any iTunes content takes so long to download. Yesterday, they asked me to uninstall iTunes and reinstall it. Went to download iTunes 10 again (90MB file) and it reported over 2 hours to download! At the same time, I downloaded a 30MB file from my iDisk in less than a minute. Either something is wrong with the iTunes server or Comcast (Residential in my case) is making it difficult to download anything associated with iTunes.

This is ridiculous!

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Answer 4

sujal

Level 1

0 points

Dec 11, 2010 3:42 PM in response to cliffwong2010

happening to me, too. Something is up with Comcast & Apple, I think. Or maybe this is casualty of the peering dispute between Comcast & Level3?

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Answer 5

Dec 19, 2010 3:19 PM in response to DSHJ

Definitely not just business class. I've been experiencing the same thing in SW FL on a residential extreme account. When I am able to connect to iTunes, downloads are glacial speed. I am able to download audio podcasts normally, but everything else is horrid. I was gone for a week and am unable to connect at all for app updates (of which there are 145.)

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Answer 6

Jun 15, 2011 8:00 PM in response to DSHJ

It's not just comcast business. It's just comcast as far as I can tell.. there is some funny business going on here.

Download from appldnld.apple.com - a1271.di3.akamai.net (64.72.65.215). Resolved identically both networks below:

At home w/comcast:

4-30KBps, iTunes often times out, have to use firefox to download. Mac, Windows, Chrome, Firefox, anything - SLOW.

At work *AT THE SAME EXACT DATE AND TIME* through vpn:

3.1 MBps!!!

Downloaded to my work machine, and the sftp'd over the VPN over comcast back to my machine:

1MBps!!

This is not just today. iTunes downloads are always PAINFULLY slow, and have been for a long long time.

***?

Akamai? Apple? Comcast? Grrrrr.

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Answer 7

Oct 22, 2011 4:09 PM in response to DSHJ

I remembered that people were having problems with OpenDNS and iTunes, and I just went ahead and set the DNS servers on my router (comcast biz in San Francisco) back to the Comcast default, and my download speeds went from 1-3Mbps back up to 27-30Mbps! (i have a 50Mbps connection).

I know it was the DNS change, because I've also tried rebooting everything, refreshing DHCP, etc., and it was just now changing DNS that made the difference.

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