Downloading Games, Slowly...

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Downloading Games, Slowly...

My friend and I are both currently downloading the expansion to world of warcraft onto different Mac laptops. I am using the newer version, his is about a year and a half old (though I do not have is system written down) and his is downloading from the same airport connection that I am and is going about 5x as fast. I have opened all the coresponding ports and do not know what else to do in order to speed up the downloading process. At the moment its going at about 10MB per 15 minutes. Any suggestions?

Thank you,

Vanessa

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 5, 2007 3:01 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 5, 2007 3:44 AM in response to Vanessa Ann

The Blizzard downloader that is used for downloading patches is using BitTorrent technology. This is a peer-to-peer downloader and your speed is affected by the peers that you get assigned to.

Sounds like your friend just happened to connect to better peers, it might speed up when you've had the downloader running for a while.

More reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_downloader

--
Martin

edit:
I guess you could just copy the downloaded files from your friend computer in case he finishes sooner.

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Answer 2

Vanessa Ann Author

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Feb 5, 2007 4:40 AM in response to Vanessa Ann

Martin,

Thank you for your help. I had forgotten about the peer to peer system that Blizzard uses. The only reason I am skeptical about being assigned "slow friends" is that I am downloading from a cafe in Rome. I have been doing this for several days now, on several occasions without my friend present. In the end I may just end up transfering the data from his computer to mine via a firewire cable, but I wanted to make sure that my computer isnt on a slower setting in general than his, which would inhibit game play or other internet related things. Can you think of anything else I can check on my mac that would speed up the web?

Vanessa

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Answer 3

Feb 5, 2007 5:55 AM in response to Vanessa Ann

Hi Vanessa,

I guess there could be quite a lot of traffic at cafés offering WiFi. You could try enabling the 'Use interface robustness' feature from the AirPort-menu. I'm not sure if it would help any, though.

--
Martin

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