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Slow download speeds for some customers - sitrep

John Venema

By John Venema
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John Venema Orbx VIP

John Venema

Posted
Posted

For reasons not entirely clear to us, and despite our investment in the very best hosted servers and CDN - some people are getting very low download speeds. We acknowledge that and have not shied away from admitting it is an issue. 

 

However, let me be clear that those people affected are in the minority. It is entirely normal that the forum is filled with many posts from people who are having issues. People who don't have issues generally are flying in the sim, not posting on forums about how great their experience is (OK some do, but most don't).

 

As I have previously shared:

 

  • On average a complete Orbx product is being downloaded somewhere in the world every 9.7 seconds.
  • November's bill for our bandwidth costs was in excess of A$32,000 - December will be much higher
  • We served up over 230,000GB of files in November - that is 230 Terabytes, or 2.3 Petabytes of data!!

 

So clearly we are not 'skimping' on paying for the best possible infrastructure we can buy. We're using Rackspace, one of the leading providers in the world. In terms of up time, our servers have not been down at all since the store was launched except for two planned outages by Ben for back-end maintenance.

 

How does this help customers getting 7Kb, 14Kb, or 45Kb/sec? (Or anything not really acceptable). Not a lot, I agree.

 

So apart from apologising for your dilemma, all we can do is continue to ask the 'obvious' questions that help us understand why speeds are so slow:

 

  • Have you disabled any AntiVirus apps while downloading?
  • Have you tried the CDN option?
  • Have you updated to the latest FTX Central v3.0.2.2?
  • Have you restarted your PC?
  • Are you following the recommended download steps (download, install and back up)
  • Have you deleted the content of the temp folder?
  • Are the low download speeds shown while FTX Central is extracting instead of downloading?

 

If you can answer YES to all of the above and it does not alleviate the problem, then we have more work to do.

 

Over the next week or so we will likely have to devise a bandwidth test for customers with this issue - and with in partnership with Rackspace try to find the cause of the bottleneck.

 

As with anything new like a brand new store on completely new infrastructure, there are bound to be teething issues and we are 100% determined and committed to giving every single customer the best and smoothest product purchase, download and management experience possible.

 

In the meantime, please don't stop posting support issues about download speeds etc, because we need as much data as possible to help resolve this issue.

 

Thanks for your patience with us as we move forwards with our new system.

 

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abaragones Newbie

abaragones

Posted
Posted

John, 

I have been looking at this a bit, the only thing that I can find in my PC is that when the download speed goes down by a lot (and remains there, less than 40KBs), I find what it shows in the picture below. When the download accelerate again the message of FTX Central waiting for...disappears. Thought I would post this, slight chance that might help.\?

Abe

 download waitingg.png

running normal.png

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hkterry Senior Member

hkterry

Posted
Posted

Thank you John to follow up the download problem. I just purchased the North German two days ago and downloaded it via the FTX Central 3. It took me more than 3 hours to download it, Whilst in the past I used the Download Manager to download any Orbx products within 15 minutes. But now the download speed is less than 2 MB/sec and very unstable sometimes dropped to less than 100 kB/sec.

 

Hoping your new system will give us a great improvement.

 

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Alex Goff Life Member

Alex Goff

Posted
Posted

There is still an option to use a download manager, go to your account at OrbxDirect, and click on product info, then there is a link to the manual download

 

02ZmgBe.png

 

This link can be used with a download manager, then installed with FTX Central using the "I already have a backup" installation option.

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RJ Orbx VIP

RJ

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Alex Goff said:

There is still an option to use a download manager, go to your account at OrbxDirect, and click on product info, then there is a link to the manual download

 

02ZmgBe.png

 

This link can be used with a download manager, then installed with FTX Central using the "I already have a backup" installation option.

 

I didn't quite get this. My freeware download manager (JDownloader) can't get anything from this "manual download" link. If you right click this link (for example: https://orbxdirect.com/account/info/05s/download) it doesn't find anything if you select COPY LINK ADDRESS. What am I doing wrong here? 

Cheers, :)

 

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Alex Goff Life Member

Alex Goff

Posted
Posted

Hi RJ,

 

There is one extra step I forgot, click the link in-browser and then when it starts downloading, copy the link that the download starts from. Chrome allows this from it's download page. The manual download link goes to a cloud server that can change so that is why it's not directly linked and requires this extra step. 

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RJ Orbx VIP

RJ

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, Alex Goff said:

Hi RJ,

There is one extra step I forgot, click the link in-browser and then when it starts downloading, copy the link that the download starts from. Chrome allows this from it's download page. The manual download link goes to a cloud server that can change so that is why it's not directly linked and requires this extra step. 

 

This is one of those tips I have to say "Love you very much". I don't have any need to download Orbx products and I was just curious. BUT this tip serves me well when downloading from other FS software stores (like FSS). FANTASTIC!!!!!! Clapping-Hands-Sign.jpgClapping-Hands-Sign.jpgClapping-Hands-Sign.jpgClapping-Hands-Sign.jpg

 

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Ben McClintock Life Member

Ben McClintock

Posted
Posted
On 12/2/2016 at 3:24 PM, abaragones said:

when the download speed goes down by a lot (and remains there, less than 40KBs)

This speed usually happens when FTX Central is extracting a file. It goes from downloading -> extracting -> downloading -> extracting (and repeat).

 

If you look at the "status" message just below "current progress", it should say when this is happening:

jckfkHj.png

 

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Anteater Member

Anteater

Posted
Posted

Downloading EU Germany North from FTX Central was at 14kb/sec and estimating 17 hours so I closed it and tried the manual download link using IDM download manager. That finished in 20 minutes at my usual 7mb/sec. Install after download was very easy. No reboot or changes in between. CDN was selected in FTX Central. 

 

I'm sure you will figure out the FTX Central problem although it must be very frustrating. 

 

 

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pasterke Advanced Member

pasterke

Posted
Posted

yes it is very frustrating :

FTX global base , FTX vector and EU Germany North: about 9 hours (changing to CDN did not help)

 

I know that we now can do something else while downloading:
so I looked in the meantime to Man.City-Chelsea, Barcelona-Real Madrid, FC Bruges-Ostend and after these three games it was time to eat :lol:

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abaragones Newbie

abaragones

Posted
Posted
On 12/3/2016 at 11:38 AM, Ben McClintock said:

This speed usually happens when FTX Central is extracting a file. It goes from downloading -> extracting -> downloading -> extracting (and repeat).

 

If you look at the "status" message just below "current progress", it should say when this is happening:

jckfkHj.png

 

Ben, yes, I understand that, but you are forgetting that even if the only issue here is that it is installing and that is why it is showing 40kbs or much less, then should the downloading and installing of base, vector, na have lasted 47 hours? sounds strange to me. I think your explanation does not fit the prohlem.

 

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Banananav Advanced Member

Banananav

Posted
Posted

I have just spent 50 minutes downloading KBLU at 103.89 KB/s.  It has now frozen at 00:00:01 remaining !

During this time I have found this topic which I have read with some interest.

Before using FTX Central to download the files I followed the manual download link on the ORBX website (not FTX Central) and using IDM had it all downloaded in under 5 mins.

Having read the above posts I have installed KBLU in 3 mins using FTX Central and my pervious download.

But why was all this information not available up-front ?

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erict Member

erict

Posted
Posted

For me FTX Central download for OpenLC North America below 100kb, 22hours estimated download time.

 

Go to Orbxdirect, manual download.  7.27GB in 25min.

 

I don't know if these files are hosted in different locations but FTX central is really slow. Even with CDN enabled. Getting updates takes forever.

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Doug Sawatzky Orbx VIP

Doug Sawatzky

Posted
Posted
On 12/2/2016 at 6:57 AM, John Venema said:
  • Have you disabled any AntiVirus apps while downloading?
  • Have you tried the CDN option?
  • Have you updated to the latest FTX Central v3.0.2.2?
  • Have you restarted your PC?
  • Are you following the recommended download steps (download, install and back up)
  • Have you deleted the content of the temp folder?
  • Are the low download speeds shown while FTX Central is extracting instead of downloading?

 

I can answer yes to all the above, and the process is still painfully slow.

 

FTXC31.png

 

FTXC32.png

 

So I am doing a manual download with my IDM which only took about 15min.....

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Handie Senior Member

Handie

Posted
Posted

Well, I ended up closing the FTX Central. Then I deleted the Temp folder for Orbx, opened the FTX Central again and restarted the update from England.
This time, the download was done at my maximum download limit, ie 1 Mb / s. That is finally downloaded and installed ;)

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Daveebee46 Senior Member

Daveebee46

Posted
Posted

Hi ,At the moment I am attempting to update LC Europe at the very slow speed of 4.5 kb/s, the England update was just as slow (cdn option ONN.... AV software OFF) I know my internet connection is not the fastest around but Dial-up it is not. I daresay the traffic is high at the moment but some of my mates are getting much higher speeds. Is there anything else I can do?

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pmb Life Member

pmb

Posted
Posted
On 13.12.2016 at 0:51 PM, Handie said:

Well, I ended up closing the FTX Central. Then I deleted the Temp folder for Orbx, opened the FTX Central again and restarted the update from England.
This time, the download was done at my maximum download limit, ie 1 Mb / s. That is finally downloaded and installed ;)

This proposal may have *something*. I just deleted the TEMP folder, and could download the OpenLC EU update with nearly full speed (100 MBit/s). May be a conincidence or not...

 

The Temp folder is under C:\Users\(your profile)\AppData\Local\Temp\Orbx

 

Kind regards, Michael

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Teo Mikael Karvonen Member

Teo Mikael Karvonen

Posted
Posted

I'm not sure is this right place to poste this. I've huge problems to download. My FTX Central is is "Checking my Orbx license" and it gets stuck for this message for many hours, and after that I get somekind of error that the files were corrupted. etc. and manual download tooks 21 days to download any ORBX global, vector or open lc.

orbx checking.png

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addman Senior Member

addman

Posted
Posted
51 minutes ago, Teo Mikael Karvonen said:

I got my new PC today, and same issue continue. Somehow the libraries downloaded, but still - unable to download orbx global, vector or open lc and I've Stockholm scenery aswell. Please help me. It get stuck to that "Checking orbx license" - message.

Hi Teo and welcome to the forums. I'm in the same situation as you, I actually reinstalled Windows 10 yesterday, for other reasons, and just started FTX Central and it still takes a long time to log in and downloads are impossibly slow. Orbx have acknowledge that there is a problem but they don't know what the actual problem is, yet. We just have to wait. I would advice you to not buy anything more at the moment, until you know that you can actually download what you've paid for.

 

/Andreas

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Teo Mikael Karvonen Member

Teo Mikael Karvonen

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, addman said:

Hi Teo and welcome to the forums. I'm in the same situation as you, I actually reinstalled Windows 10 yesterday, for other reasons, and just started FTX Central and it still takes a long time to log in and downloads are impossibly slow. Orbx have acknowledge that there is a problem but they don't know what the actual problem is, yet. We just have to wait. I would advice you to not buy anything more at the moment, until you know that you can actually download what you've paid for.

 

/Andreas

Good to hear that I'm not the only one having these issues. unfortunately I just bought the Vector and open LC because I tought they would add more realisim to my sim. Sad part is that I just cant even download them....

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Jewed Member

Jewed

Posted
Posted

Nope u are not alone, me too, i tried dowload the zip fil through 3 different computors 2 with windows 10 and one with windows 7. Nothing helps, the problem started "for me" with realy bad download speed and ended up with an error message an now its only stuck with licens checking. And just like the previous speaker I will not purchasing anything before the problem is solved

 

Jerker

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banjoman1960 Life Member

banjoman1960

Posted
Posted

+1 update for EULC does not work for me,other updates was ok.............reinstall of EULC also error,need to put backup in,to get it back..........update not possible........

also deinstall does not remove the files,male them only useless......to remove i need to delite them manual.........

also you need to delite the temp orbx folder,it does not clean up itself after an error..........it waste 18gig space for corupted downloads.......

 

cheers

 

.

2.JPG

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addman Senior Member

addman

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Teo Mikael Karvonen said:

Let's hope there will come some fix to this. And soon. And I got email from ticket support that the problem is in my end, they can't do anything to my download speed... <_< Hmph.

The problem isn't at your end! that's BS! The manual installation from the orbxdirect.com website is just as slow or not downloading at all. HEAR THIS ORBX!: BOTH FTX CENTRAL AND MANUAL DOWNLOADING ARE IMPOSSIBLY SLOW OR NOT WORKING AT ALL!

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