why it is so slow to download El Capitan?

Edward,

It's just a matter of supply/demand.

Many users attempting to download at the same time.

The servers are swamped. Try again later.

WIth billions of $, one would think that Apple can do something about it, like it's a computer company, no ?

18 Billion USD profit this year..!

It is NOT just Apple. There are ISPs that are having difficulties delivering the bits in a timely manor.

Here is a report of just one ISP having difficulties

<http://apple.slashdot.org/story/15/10/01/1220215/reports-telstra-customers-suffe ring-crippling-speeds-to-any-apple-service>

Also some ISPs limit the bandwidth the accept across some backbone interconnects, which if tons of their customers are trying to draw bits through those interconnects, it can be limiting. Maybe you remember the Netflix controversy a few years ago. It was resolved by Netflix paying for dedicated network connections from each of the ISPs, instead of send bits across the interconnects.

Or if the ISP has a regional router that does not normally handle large loads, suddenly gets saturated, you are still limited and that also has nothing to do with Apple.

Go to System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> DNS and just add: 203.122.233.11

I was struggling with a 2 day download time, now it only took 2 hours.

AcrobaticWhales wrote:

Go to System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> DNS and just add: 203.122.233.11

I was struggling with a 2 day download time, now it only took 2 hours.

That should not affect the speed of the download, as you only need to do the name lookup once.

However, Apple does have different servers, and it is possible a different DNS server gave you a different download server, maybe one that was inside your ISP's network and not coming across a backbone interconnect.

Thanks!

From 14 hours to 26 minutes!

Just went from 2 days to 20 mins!

FWIW, I tried this with a new MacBook and it dramatically increased the download speed. (12 hours to 38 minutes)

Did this and went from 3 days to 17mins 🙂 🙂 thanks so much!

i have no clue why this is working because from what i know it should not give us any advantage, but adding that Aussie DNS server to my Network settings my download speed decreased from 6.5 Hours to 40 minutes.. holy moly.. how is that possible ? 🙂

Thanks for this, AcrobaticWhales🙂

Thanks AcrobaticWhales! I'm a network administrator at a major hospital in my area and I'll be honest, it makes no sense that changing the DNS would work, but after changing to your suggested DNS, then pausing and restarting the download, my time went from over 5 hours to under 20 minutes! Thanks again!!

I'm a UNIX sys admin, and I do not understand how changing the DNS server would make a difference. But it does. I have been trying since Thursday to download, with broken downloads and 5+ day download times. Since changing the DNS server, it's gone down to < 30 minutes! Thanks!