What is the cause for variations in download speed?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

OK, I know there are variations but look at the bit from zypper dup - the variations in there are from 1.9MiB/s to 370B/s with most of the downloads arounc 10KiB/s. So zypper dup takes ages… Now here in NZ we have fiber to the house and the local speed is normally quite fast so I presume it must be on transit. I use the normal repos as listed (I didn’t use any of the mirrors) unfortunately there is no local server hosting opensuse repos. Some time ago the download speed was around 800KiB/s - not particularly fast but acceptable. I dread a major update with 1000 packages - this one at least is only 322 packages - it runs for over an hour already and I am at package 177.

Retrieving: breeze5-cursors-5.13.1-1.1.noarch.rpm ........................................................................[done (8.7 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package breeze5-wallpapers-5.13.1-1.1.noarch                                              (3/323),  21.2 MiB ( 21.6 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: breeze5-wallpapers-5.13.1-1.1.noarch.rpm .....................................................................[done (1.9 MiB/s)]
Retrieving package btrfsprogs-udev-rules-4.17-1.1.noarch                                             (4/323),  62.6 KiB (  387   B unpacked)
Retrieving: btrfsprogs-udev-rules-4.17-1.1.noarch.rpm ................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package ethtool-4.17-1.1.x86_64                                                           (5/323), 136.5 KiB (386.7 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: ethtool-4.17-1.1.x86_64.rpm ..................................................................................[done (7.8 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package krb5-1.15.3-2.1.x86_64                                                            (6/323), 627.1 KiB (  1.9 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: krb5-1.15.3-2.1.x86_64.rpm .................................................................................[done (845.0 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libXaw7-1.0.13-2.1.x86_64                                                         (7/323), 176.4 KiB (465.7 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libXaw7-1.0.13-2.1.x86_64.rpm ..............................................................................[done (830.5 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libbtrfs0-4.17-1.1.x86_64                                                         (8/323),  82.5 KiB ( 50.9 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libbtrfs0-4.17-1.1.x86_64.rpm ............................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package libflatpak0-0.11.8.3-1.1.x86_64                                                   (9/323), 304.3 KiB (594.2 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libflatpak0-0.11.8.3-1.1.x86_64.rpm ........................................................................[done (550.2 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libgcc_s1-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64                                               (10/323),  50.6 KiB ( 94.4 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libgcc_s1-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64.rpm ...................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package libgomp1-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64                                                (11/323), 106.2 KiB (255.7 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libgomp1-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64.rpm ......................................................................[done (403.1 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libinput-udev-1.11.1-1.1.x86_64                                                  (12/323),  62.6 KiB ( 35.2 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libinput-udev-1.11.1-1.1.x86_64.rpm ......................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package libldap-data-2.4.46-35.1.noarch                                                  (13/323),  58.7 KiB (  6.4 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libldap-data-2.4.46-35.1.noarch.rpm ......................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package liblzma5-5.2.4-1.1.x86_64                                                        (14/323), 126.2 KiB (206.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: liblzma5-5.2.4-1.1.x86_64.rpm ..............................................................................[done (517.9 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libmpg123-0-1.25.10-2.1.x86_64                                                   (15/323), 143.7 KiB (351.9 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libmpg123-0-1.25.10-2.1.x86_64.rpm .........................................................................[done (572.6 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libquadmath0-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64                                            (16/323), 141.2 KiB (255.2 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libquadmath0-8.1.1+r261583-1.1.x86_64.rpm ..................................................................[done (630.1 KiB/s)]
Retrieving package libtirpc-netconfig-1.0.3-2.1.x86_64                                              (17/323),  23.1 KiB (  1.9 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libtirpc-netconfig-1.0.3-2.1.x86_64.rpm ..................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package libwayland-egl1-18.1.2-200.1.x86_64                                              (18/323), 151.9 KiB (  5.9 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: libwayland-egl1-18.1.2-200.1.x86_64.rpm ........................................................................done (370 B/s)
#2

Your DNS might influence things here, especially if it happens to point you at a server on the other side of the world and is heavily loaded perhaps.

#3

Thanks, dean0_ferrari I will change DNS again. Haven’t done it on this computer yet… Most of my other computers use openDNS.

nslookup download.opensuse.org/
Server:         192.168.2.1
Address:        192.168.2.1#53

** server can't find download.opensuse.org/: NXDOMAIN
#4

Changed to openDNS and now:

nslookup download.opensuse.org
Server:         208.67.222.222
Address:        208.67.222.222#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   download.opensuse.org
Address: 195.135.221.134
Name:   download.opensuse.org
Address: 2620:113:80c0:8::13
#5

You had ‘nslookup download.opensuse.org/’. It should be

nslookup download.opensuse.org
#6

Ah - my mistake, I just copied it before I tried the nslookup command. Now I changed DNS and I will see how fast the download are next time…

#7

In general mirrorbrain should take care of finding the fastest mirror for you, but occasionally users get better results by explicitly configuring a server. YMMV.

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mirrors

#8

Yes, some years ago I have looked through those mirrors for one in New Zealand. Although there is this https://www.wxc.co.nz on this list, it must be long outdated. Unfortunately there are no opensuse repos here (in New Zealand). Otherwise with my fibre connection I would have a very fast update.

#9

Yes, but the geographic proximity won’t necessarily improve the download speeds. Picking a less heavily loaded server is what counts.

#10

I’ve found that if I start updating soon after the snapshot is published, then it can be slow. If I wait for a while, it is faster. My guess is that if I start too soon, then very few mirrors are available. If I wait for a while, there will be more mirrors and a better chance of faster access.

#11

Yes, that makes sense to me as well Neil.

#12

Hi
@NZer’s why not ping Waikato University, they use to host a mirror, else see what’s up with the WorldxChange Communications mirror…

https://mirrors.opensuse.org/list/tumbleweed.html

Else try one in Australia… but as others pointed out depends on the repo priority settings, if you drill down to the repo index and look at what’s available where…

For example;
http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/repomd.xml.mirrorlist

#13

For those overseas - NZ has two connections to the rest of the world, one via Australia the other via Hawaii (the southern cross cables). Although there are plans to increase the capacity with more cables, this is at the moment the bottleneck for international data even though within NZ there are many fibre high speed connections. @malcolmlewis - you previously (when I had similar problems) suggested Waikato University. Unfortunately neither them nor WxC host a mirror server with opensuse repos any more so we have to go through the southern cross cables. However I did some downlaods from overseas today (not computer upgrades) and reached speeds over 3MB/s which I haven’t reached with this computer. May be that is with the new DNS settings to openDNS. On long-term it would be good, however if opensuse culd find a mirror within NZ. If I can be of assistance and someone can give me any contacts I will certainly try to assist.

#14

This is not likely to be causing the throttling with updates. I frequently stream from overseas sites at Mbps rates. It will be down to the download servers you were connecting to at the time (as per Neil’s post).

#15

On Sun 01 Jul 2018 11:36:03 PM CDT, fuerstu wrote:

For those overseas - NZ has two connections to the rest of the world,
one via Australia the other via Hawaii (the southern cross cables).
Although there are plans to increase the capacity with more cables, this
is at the moment the bottleneck for international data even though
within NZ there are many fibre high speed connections. @malcolmlewis -
you previously (when I had similar problems) suggested Waikato
University. Unfortunately neither them nor WxC host a mirror server with
opensuse repos any more so we have to go through the southern cross
cables. However I did some downlaods from overseas today (not computer
upgrades) and reached speeds over 3MB/s which I haven’t reached with
this computer. May be that is with the new DNS settings to openDNS. On
long-term it would be good, however if opensuse culd find a mirror
within NZ. If I can be of assistance and someone can give me any
contacts I will certainly try to assist.

Hi
I imagine Tasman-2 and Pac-Rim-West are still in the background
probably only for voice these days…

Maybe ask your ISP if they are interested in hosting, in all cases you
(or others) would need approach/find someone there that could host a
mirror.

Unfortunately I think Tumbleweed is an issue for some as it uses a lot
traffic since it’s a new release…

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-23-default
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#16

I’ll mention my speeds for comparison.

I do not have fiber. I’m on VDSL, at 24mb/s. At the best of times, my download speeds are around 2.2M (megabytes per second). That’s the limit of my VDSL connection.

For updating Leap 15.0, I often see speeds around 2M. However, if I’m updating a Packman package, speeds are far slower – sometimes 20K.

For updating Tumbleweed, I’m often seeing around 1.2M. That’s a lot slower than Leap. So the limit is not my connection speed, but the repo throughput speed, probably with competition from many other people updating at the same time. If I start my update soon after it was announced, I might be down to 400K from opensuse repos, and again slower for packman packages.

If I download the DVD iso (using “aria2c”), and start that soon after the announcement, I will sometimes see an expected arrival time of 30 hours. If I wait for 2 hours before starting, I can usually download in 30-45 minutes.

#17

I know I can have times with a bad connection and then often I cancel and try later. I wrote this thread because of the variation of speed during download see from my last update towards the end:

Retrieving package plasma5-desktop-lang-5.13.1-1.1.noarch                                          (312/323),   6.6 MiB ( 19.7 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: plasma5-desktop-lang-5.13.1-1.1.noarch.rpm ...................................................................[done (2.1 MiB/s)]
Retrieving package plasma5-session-5.13.1-1.1.noarch                                               (313/323),  84.0 KiB ( 66.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: plasma5-session-5.13.1-1.1.noarch.rpm ....................................................................................[done]
Retrieving package plasma5-session-wayland-5.13.1-1.1.noarch                                       (314/323),  82.1 KiB ( 65.2 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: plasma5-session-wayland-5.13.1-1.1.noarch.rpm ..................................................................[done (376 B/s)]

These are all packages from the same download OSS repo, but the one has a speed of 2.1MiB/s the next hasn’t registered a speed and the last is 376B/s (and nrickert I think that the speed is always measured in …bits/second not …bytes/second). Of course the last 2 packages here are much smaller, so may be the downloads start small? In any case a download of 323 packages should not have lasted nearly 3 hours.
By the way before we had fibre I was on VDSL as well with a maximum of 8MB/s as we were too far from the exchange. Now my speed is limited to 30MB/s - theoretically I could go to 200MB/s but to get higher speed would cost more and I never reach even 30MB/s with overseas connections.

#18

No, MiB/s is mebibytes per second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

#19

Hi
With Tumbleweed, far less mirrors, I would expect mirrorbrain can switch around to faster mirrors for the other releases…

Likewise for me I get speeds of around 2.1MB and a dvd takes similar time…