Why are My iTunes Downloads so Slow?

This has gone on since 2008. Apple does nothing but states this is the problem of wireless or browser or hardware yet I have no problem with Netfliks or Msnbc or utube....

Switched to Mac because Microsoft did not address their software glitches only to find Apple does the same. If they would at least address the fact that they have a probllem/

yeah, if only eh?...but I think we all know they won'! 😠

Same experience here with anything being downloaded from Apple! For at least the last 5-6 months we have gone from very fast down loads from Apple Software Update Servers which were humming at around a Megabyte to 1.5 MB a second for the better part of the last DECADE! Which was fantastic and essential for upgrading dozens of computers on the many networks we manage. Now every single network for the last 5-6 months is only getting fractions of theses throughputs. Down to 30-80 KBs (Per Machine) which is a nightmare. It makes no difference geographically in Sydney or which Service provider. We have called the service providers and they have tested the pipe to Apples servers and they get the same results. We were comfortably getting 1GB downloads with in 20-40 minutes per machine with up to 5 or six machines on an ADSL 2+ connection at a time... easily, now its taking 3-4 hours to get a gigabyte per machine with only 2 or 3 computers at a time.

Its a nightmare and yes we use an in-house OSX Servers SUS and down load the big updates and distribute them internally but there are now so many different updates required for different machines its difficult to do this and we just upgraded 2 computers to Lion and they wanted to down load over 2.5GB in updates each with out the system software updates which we had previously downloaded. SUS on each computer was indicating just under 24 hours to down load 2.5 GB from Apple. We were able to down load this with in an hour previously.

Its become a nightmare harking back to the performance we were getting from the internet in the Nineties. It is suspected that since Apple removed their mirrors from around the world we all have to go to the States to get our Software, iOs and iTunes updates and Apples growth is impacting on their ability so serve up the bandwidth with everybody downloading ridiculously large 3.5 GB Lion installers.

Interestingly Microsoft servers are dishing up the same poor bandwidth performance as Apple yet Google is the same its always been at around 800-1MB a second and many other big companies blow the Apple servers out of the water on the same networks.

Something has to be done about this as our clients are beginning to complain seriously about it as its costing significantly more to run an Apple Network.

And no one from Apple wants to talk about it. And this post will most likely self destruct once Apple reads it!

I'm going to post this in several threads. I hate doing that so I apologize but I hope more people can see this as it very well may be the issue for many.

Six months ago I had a very similar issue to the one I just started having in the past couple days. My speed tests were great and I have a 10Mbit DSL connection. Downloads from what appeared to be anywhere were great except from Apple. Apple said there was no problem. My ISP said there was no problem. I was very persistant with my ISP though and after a month of my ISP insisting there wasn't a problem or that the problem was me or Apple, they finally found a problem on what they called their DS3 going back to the Main Switch on my Line Group.

So back to the past couple of days. Same problem. Today I contacted the person I was in talking with six months ago at my ISP to see if it's on their end. They just got back to me that it was indeed their DS3 again. My download speed from Apple is back to normal. Very odd that I was only seeing an issue with Apple's servers though.

Well now that is VERY interesting and requires further investigation with the service providers that have insisted there is no problem with their connections. Time to out the service providers and shame them in to action if they are not prepared to investigate. Michael which service provider was this issue discovered at? If you would. If its the same service providers then we may have a pre-existing case to persue and an in/persistent to resolve it.

It's possible that they try to limit connections since overloading servers is not very healthy.

I guess it's okay to say it was CenturyLink. Once the top brass in my area got involved, the very very helpful and nice. Something like this is very hard to see on their end and on the consumer end. In fact they said more people than just me were effected but I was the only person to log any complaint out of the addresses assigned to that card. They had to do specific tests to that card in order for it to even show errors. They were very surprised that it failed again so soon and had I not brought it to their attention, they wouldn't even have known there was an issue.

Yes, it must be the fault of my windows PC, my stupidity, my internet provider and/or my router and not on Apple's side. The fact that I just downloaded Photoshop CS6 in about three minutes and iTunes is going to take 3 hours is simply, why???

I have to agree with the other posters. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with Apple's download speeds, and I also have had no issues with any other sites that offer streaming and downloading. I would agree that it is my ISP if my speeds were slow across the board. Consequently, I've been renting films from alternate sites, and I'll continue to do so until Apple fixes this issue. It's entirely too frustrating to try and rent a movie for the evening only to find you'll have to wait 4 hours just to watch it.

Netflix user, never any problem, film wanted to watch was only available on itunes.

Unbelievable slow speed of download in itunes, madness, I have 40mb broadband

Have been using BBC iPlayer for years, again never any problem.

Not sure if I shall purchase a movie again in itunes, probably only when I am being proactive, downloading a movie for play the next day or something.

I can concur that these speeds from the iTunes servers are indeed, very, very slow.

I have a 100 mbps cable Internet connections via Midco.net. I get blazing speeds from nearly everything, all the time. I just ran a test during my download of a movie just now, and the test came back at 110 mbps.

However, whenever I download movies via iTunes, or anything for that matter, speeds fluctuate between 5 - 7 mbps, rarely exceeding this.

Hopefully Apple's forthcoming data center upgrades will address these issues.

Me too. I have 150mbps Verizon Fios Quantum. Downloading a movie from iTunes makes it look like 56k dial up. Booooooooo

As I stated though, I was basically only having an issue with Apple's servers but my ISP confirmed they were the problem - though it took a long time for them to figure it out.

Hello, all, I am somewhat moderately knowlgedable about computer; I had a problem with my Apple iTunes running slower than it had before on my machine. I don't think I've done anything different but recently it started to get slow, as in .1 megabytes per second download, for even single files. It frustrated me when I downloaded movies that would take maybe part of a day to download, specially HD movies. Now I went surfing around and didn't find too much helpful information, but something did help me. I ran the diagnostics for iTunes network connectivity tests, which I looked in the information at the end that I could copy to my clipboard and noticed that iTunes said it was NOT enabled through Windows Firewall. I looked in Windows Firewall and saw that is showed it was enabled. So I decided to add it again, which I went and added it in again. Then I went to my router and added the TCP port 5223 to port forwarding, and now I get .4MB-.7MB per second instead. What I think happened is that after updated it, or/also since I am on Windows 7 64 operating system I went and added the iTunes 64 version. So maybe an update disconnected the enablement from Windows Firewall, or it had an issue with it being the 64 version or both. Now I know work ones can be cheaper with computers so I know my work likes old computers so it uses the regular Windows 7 and not 64 bit. So maybe that is why it works better on some and not others.

So the process, from iTunes' "Help" tab click it and then click "Run Diagnostics..." Have only "Network connectivity tests" selected hit the "Next" button then the "Next" button again and the "Next" button again. Under "Firewall Information" look at and see what it says, it might say "Windows Firewall is on" "iTunes is enabled in Windows Firewall" if it says something like "Windows Firewall is NOT enabled in Windows Firewall" then go to you "Start Button" click it and click "Control Panel" then click "Windows Firewall" you might want large icons as the view by option to find it easier, then click "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall" and make sure to scroll down and see iTunes, and I made sure that I had clicked both options of "public" and "Home/Work (Private)" for iTunes as in checked. Then I clicked the button "Allow another program..." scrolled down to iTunes, and clicked it and then clicked the "Add" button. And made sure both "Public" and "Home/Work (Private)" were selected, as in checked.

And I instantly saw my speeds increase, then I went to my router's address and went to port forwarding and added the program iTunes to my computer's address and put 5223 for the TCP. I won't type all the steps for port forwarding because I think that all routers are different. So maybe look around and see how to forward ports on your router.

Hopefully that is enough information to get even the less tech savvy through to be able to get faster speeds. I would say I am more intermediate to advance level tech savvy than expert. But at my work sometimes I help the tech dude when he is overwhelmed. I am used to typing up long winded explanations for those with even barely the ability to use a mouse so sorry to those with more knowledge that end up reading this whole thing.

So remember this is what I did to "fix" my speed issues. Much happier now. I hope this helps you if you have slow speeds as well.

-DeeHunt

Sometimes though, it is just a slow connection to Apples servers and nothing can be done to speed it up.

Way back about five months or so, I had purchased the Paranormal Activity the Chronology movie in HD. It's almost 9GB in size. It started out downloading slow and said it would take about four hours on my DSL connection. About an hour in, it got a lot faster and was down to about 45 minutes left to download.

A few months ago, I deleted it to make room for a few other movies. I decided to download it again so I could watch it this weekend. Same thing happened but this time, it said it would take six hours to download. About an hour in, same thing, it was down to about 45 minutes left.

I downloaded another HD movie and this one was 3.4GB in size and it took 30 minutes.

Apple has some issues to work out still and the slow downloads aren't always because of a setting on our end.