Q: Why are My iTunes Downloads so Slow?

1) traceroute: Warning: a1442.v.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net has multiple addresses; using 212.247.20.41

traceroute to a1442.w11.akamai.net (212.247.20.41), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

1  dsldevice.lan (192.168.xxx.xxx)  66.854 ms  86.385 ms  97.996 ms

2  dXXXXXX.cust.tele2.se (x.x.x.x)  361.574 ms  352.081 ms  218.999 ms

3  xx.tele2.net (130.244.x.xxx)  192.381 ms  262.468 ms  245.016 ms

4  * * *

5  * bck-core-1.tengige0-1-1-0.tele2.net (130.244.68.27)  259.299 ms  139.350 ms

6  * kst5-core-1.bundle-ether4.tele2.net (130.244.39.140)  171.429 ms *

7  * * *

8  * 212.247.20.41 (212.247.20.41)  176.641 ms  205.933 ms

2) They're not prioritizing that I know of or that I can detect. They're not known for meddling with services. But who knows for sure?

3) Yeah, but I can live with 2 hours for now, even if I'd prefer faster.

4) There's no measurable heavyhanded overhead and in addition other types of downloads from other servers go very very fast, usually close to filling my bandwidth, though not always. Occassionally there are problems but I don't see how those comes in play here. Intermittant network problems are a pita.

You have to much round trip time already at your router. I find that fairly strange, and suggest that the problem either is in your local network or somewhere in your ISP's network.

When I traceroute the same IP that you got, I get the following result:

4  se-tug.nordu.net (109.105.102.21)  9.412 ms  9.176 ms  9.127 ms

5  se-fre.nordu.net (109.105.97.1)  10.485 ms  13.533 ms  9.918 ms

6  avk-core-1.gigabiteth4-0-0.swip.net (194.68.128.21)  9.247 ms  9.471 ms  9.407 ms

7  kst5-peer-1.ae1-unit0.tele2.net (130.244.39.10)  10.409 ms  11.931 ms  10.061 ms

8  212.247.20.41 (212.247.20.41)  10.153 ms  9.718 ms  12.441 ms

If I run a traceroute on the hostname, I get this:

5  se-fre.nordu.net (109.105.97.1)  9.944 ms  10.638 ms  9.926 ms

6  s-b3-link.telia.net (213.248.97.17)  9.205 ms  9.569 ms *

7  80-239-254-58.customer.teliacarrier.com (80.239.254.58)  10.310 ms  9.311 ms  9.278 ms

Do you get significant better RTT if you ping/traceroute other services?

How is that relevant here when I have just verified 7mbit/s with 40ms response time?

Sorry. that may have sounded harsh which was not my intention.

All this talk about DNS made me look harder on my network issues, like mean speeds and the occassional drop out. I found this interesting tool "Namebench" https://code.google.com/p/namebench/ for evaluating Name Servers and I am chasing the best DNS for my network now.

I don't care about DNS or any other technicqal aspect. I just paid 16 quid for videos that I want to watch on my PC now - as in today. If I want to wait days to see the videos I want then I'll go to Tesco and get them just as cheaply. Pull your finger out Apple. You can take your design and coolness and must have BS and save it for the hyped up stage launches. Here in the everyday world I want my videos. Where are they? You have my money. I want my videos and when I see 3500 hours left to download then, OBVIOUSLY, that;s not good enough. Not even close. Get it sorted or stop charging people money.

awesome, that fixed the problem! Went form 55 hours to 12 minutes.

I found that if you have a video that you've already downloaded, playing, while you download, the speed is noticeably faster.

This article is so helpfull, i disable my antivirus "Kaspersky" and download 65mb/s now   thanks

hey! i also disabled my antivirus (avast) and the download went a little bit faster! (still slow though..)

Before I updated my iPad to iOS7 I could begin watching rental movies as it was downloading. The whole iTunes 'experience' since iOS7 update has not been for the better I have to say. Going to give Netflix a chance.

Lately, my iTunes downloads have been stalling out many times during playback.  Is Apple having problems?  I checked everything on my end.  It's not me.

I just wanted to reply to StumpyBloke. DNS has everything to do with it because the DNS server response you get from the server is what dictates what apple server you download from. I use my own DNS server which querries the 13 root DNS servers on the internet directly which gives me the best download speed. I tested this theory and did some packet sniffing analysis of DNS responses and I can see the DNS requests my computers make get constinantly differnet responses based on the DNS servers. I took the responses and traced them geographicly and can see a definate coorelation. I know not everyone is a network engineer like me but the best thing to do is to test using your isp's DNS servers and other public DNS servers while downloading the same exact thing everytime. I suggest closing itunes in between the changing of the DNS settings. Once you have a good result stick with it. Cheers and happy downloading.

This link helps fix a windows7 64bit issue that does pop up. If you run the diagnositic you will see itunes not enabled on firewall this link will help win vista-win 8 users. I did this on three PC's and they can all download fast. I did several test one PC downloading the same TV episode as the other and was able to reproduce results after disabling itunes after fixing it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2553

This issue frustrated me for some time.  I decided to reset all DNS settings on my computers (PC and APPLE), Apple TVs, routers and servers to the ISP specified servers.  After that, all DNS cache information was flushed and then for good measure rebooted the lot.

This has fixed all problems relating to speed of downloads for iTunes, Apple TV and Apple Store search and downloads.

I've noticed that on occasions tracks will download quite quickly on simultaneous downloads and then there is the odd one that says it will take over half an hour for just 10 MB of music.  In order to speed the process up I've simply stopped downloading that particular track with the pause icon and then gone to the menu bar at the top of itunes that says STORE and checked for avaialble downloads.

These have then come straight through.

Don't know if this helps or not.