On Monday, December 27, 2004, 11:45:59 AM, Russ wrote: RU> Kevin Stanford wrote: >> Our updates seem to be taking a very long time. I am 85% updated and the >> ETA shows 07:00. Is it me?
RU> I see stuff like this come and go... Our updates are (finally) RU> triggered from the email notifications... Below is a snippet of the RU> last update that shows exactly what speeds we saw, which ran at 10:45 RU> EST this morning... Every once in a while, I will see it slow down to RU> about 8KB/s, but rarely slower than that... There are going to be random events like this for a while - as long as some folks still download based on a schedule rather than responding to update notifications. What happens is that sometimes a group of systems will "agree" to all download their rulebase files at the same time - when that happens our bandwidth gets saturated and things go slowly. (We are working on this in a number of ways.) Most of the time there is plenty of bandwidth, and if everyone always downloaded only when there was an update notification then there would always be plenty (our system paces updates to make sure this is the case as much as possible). We are in a transitional period where existing connectivity contracts prevent us from moving without incurring a significant cost (a cost we would rather not pass on to our customers). Over the next 6-9 months we will make the transition to a new rulebase format and distribution method and we will also be migrating to new hosting facilities (already running in case we encounter a serious DL problem). Since rulebase downloads should always be automated in some way, the occasional slow download should not be a problem. We will continue to monitor the situation closely - and we appreciate the reports we get. The things that you can do to help are: 1. If you haven't already, please upgrade your scripting so that your automated downloads are triggered from our update notifications. 2. If you are not going to use update notifications please be sure to use the staggered schedule we've posted here: http://www.sortmonster.com/MessageSniffer/Help/LogsHelp.html#When 3. AVOID using accelerated download software! This is the kind of software that downloads large files by opening multiple connections to the same server. Almost all of the "slowdowns" we experience have been associated with someone downloading a rulebase with this kind of software -- they open 100+ connections for themselves (sometimes more) and that slows things down for everyone else. We have adjusted our server's setting to mitigate this, but we can't turn it off completely without causing other performance problems ;-) Hope this helps, _M This E-Mail came from the Message Sniffer mailing list. For information and (un)subscription instructions go to http://www.sortmonster.com/MessageSniffer/Help/Help.html
