Q: Why are My iTunes Downloads so Slow?

My guess is that Apple has grown too popular for their own good.  By allowing streaming to millions of devices, any data center will have a difficult time keeping up with demand.

By way of confirmation, it is 6 months since my first remarks and nothing changes.

Right now I'm in the midst of a 7 hour download of an HD movie. I have a slow connection ( 2.5 Mbps }but this works out at about 0.7. 

Naturally, Apple TV is out of the question.

Meanwhile Netflix streams away - no hesitation and an acceptable quality.

I only resort to itunes when I can't get a movie my wife wants any other way.

Apple is very arrogant. The always kiss you off regardless of who is at fault.

I do understand how DNS works, and I was also confused about why changing your DNS server might affect download speeds.  On the surface of it, it shouldn't -- it doesn't matter how quickly I look up your address, if the road to get to you is slow, I should have slow performance.

Then I remembered something I read about Google and YouTube bandwidth -- and it boils down to this:

* Google (YouTube), Apple, and other providers of big content (or CDNs) may have reached an arrangement with your ISP to offer a more direct connection to their content, perhaps over dedicated links that reach more directly to the content servers.

* The easiest way to inform your computer about this more direct link is to send you an address specially for the purpose -- if you are on Verizon FiOS, then the Verizon DNS servers will send you the correct address for Verizon's fast connection to Apple. 

* If you don't use Verizon's DNS, but, for example, use 8.8.8.8 (Google), there is no way that Google would know or should ever send you the specific Verizion-Apple IP address.

I had a similar configuration myself and after removing the 8.8.8.8 Google DNS and using the default Verizon DNS, I went from 300kbps to 6mbs. 

So you can stop yelling at each other, you're both right: DNS can't actually make a difference in download speed, but it could send you to a private wormhole-type IP address that actually gives you much faster download speeds because of the physical topology of the network and agreements between carriers and Apple to facilitate faster speeds.  Which, at least in my case, it seems to do.

I saw nobody yelling, Pacobo, and we already had a nice explanation.  What I don't understand is why anyone would use Google's DNS service at all.  It serves no useful purpose, and only exists to give Google even more access to your personal life.  By using a third-party DNS, you voluntarily tell Google everywhere you're going, and when. This is dangerous.

For what it's worth, I use my phone company's DNS, which is located a few miles from my Vermont home. Sadly, this has no bearing on Apple's broken system. It still claims that itunes.apple.com is hosted in Australia. Only off by 15000 miles ...

thanks pacobo.  i had my dns set to google (8.8.8.8) and i changed it to my local isp dns and that did the trick.  was wondering what was going on when it said my movie was going to take 3 hours to download.  paused my download, changed the dns, and now it says 10mins!

Thanks ccmoon007 your advice was helpful

Hello- I rent films from iTunes once a month or so and usually have decent download speeds about 1 meg a second but tonight it was about 10% of that so I paused the download and rebooted my mac and unplugged my Airport Extreme and Cable Modem. When I replugged and restarted the download in iTunes My download initial recovered to the 1 meg a second but within a few minutes began to fluctuate between .1 meg a sec to 1+ meg a second. No doubt maintainance somewhere in itunes delivery method as speedtest.net shows no loss of my cable modems bandwidth.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my download speeds are pathetic, which isn't surprising since iTunes uses the wrong host.  Instead of picking a New England location, they're trying to download from a server in Iran!  No, I don't use Google's third-party DNS, or any others.  Just my ISP's server, located 2 miles from my home.

This solve my problem

Interesting article, but not useful for PC owners. There is no such folder as /Library/Preferences/ByHost/ on Windows or Linux machines.  Hopefully it will be of some use for Macintosh users.

Found it!  Clearing it had no effect, but the Windows version of that folder is %appdata%\Apple Computer\Preferences\ByHost  I expect Kaspersky is causing some of this (but not the odd Iranian server), since every download is getting routed through avp.exe.  If I disable Kaspersky, than iTunes appears in the Network Activity monitor, at a slightly faster speed. But still much slower than anything else. *shrug*

What worked for me was entering the correct DNS Server settings into my Router and computer's connection preferences. By default most routers will use Google's with is 8.8.8.8 but most ISPs will have their own which are MUCH faster for their clients. Contact your ISPs support number or website to get the IP address of their DNS servers.

This brought my download speeds from 5 hours down to 30 minutes in iTunes.

THe links below only show how to change settings on your local computer but you will still need to update them on your router. I won't even try and list links for the hundreds of kinds of routers out there so you are on your own there. Just Google "Change DNS for [ROUTER MODEL]"

HOW-TO LINK for Mac Users

HOW-TO LINK for Windows Users (XP)

Hope this helps!

Thank you Ace, but I wish people would stop posting this Google garbage.  Aside from being irrelevant, it would be a very poor router that defaults to anything except "Obtain DNS automatically" on the DNS field, More likely, your ISP is slacking, and providing 8.8.8.8 instead of hosting their own server.  Fortunately, my provider isn't a cheapskate, nor are any I've used in the past 30 years.

While it is true that the wrong DNS can affect download speeds if the download server is routing your requests, it has nothing to do with my situation, nor the original posters. We *are* using our ISP's servers, which are located quite close to our homes.  Apple's Chinese server farms (or wherever Akamai really is) are at fault, as they are the ones providing incorrect routing, and completely at random.

I can watch my download cycle between Iran, Australia, Germany, and the United States during a single movie download. Akamai is doing that; not my ISP's DNS server.

When I changed from using DYN DNS (basically the same service as Google DNS)  to my local DNS provider it  certainly made my iTunes download speeds a lot more consistent in a good way.  I never tracked what servers Akamai was serving me from but made the asumption based on speed and what I researched that it was the closest one from where my ISP DNS servers made their lookup from.  I have no idea why you would bounced to distribution points so geographically far away from each other (and you I assume)  based on what I have read, but obviously it is happening and having a negative impact on your speeds. (I will make a point to track this for my own downloads next time I have a chance).   I am not sure what the inference was in regards to Akamai and "Chinese Server farms" but the architecture as I understand it is built around distributing content as geographically close to the consumer as possible. Again, not my area of expertise.  Also they are an American company based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. (http://www.akamai.com/html/about/facts_figures.html).  They have content distribution worldwide, but my understanding is that assuming your ISP is running their own DNS then you should be served content from the closest Akamai distribution point.  Certainly seems to be a frustrating issue for a number of people, and even more frustrating is that there doesn't seem to be one fix.  For me the DNS change from DYN to my local ISP's DNS worked and I am happy, though I would have preferred to stay with DYN.  Hopefully we can find something that works for you as well..