Any ideas on why files from my server seem to download so slowly? I've got an 8meg file on there which I can only download at about 10k a sec, whereas on mosty other servers I can easily get 70k a sec? What things should I check - how can I check my bandwidth etc...

how about posting the URL to the file here and maybe we can look into it for you from our connections?

also the IP address to the server to allow us to check some speeds.

No probs - the file is on my server at http://dps.planetdps.com/setup.exe ip 212.67.197.102

I was only lucky enough to get 5kb/sec from a DSL.

Are you with tera-byte?

They have been slow all day ... This time they cant put it down to anyone but themselves. My connection has been lightning fast going through alter.net avergae response times around 80ms then u hit the tera-byte routers and they are around 380 to 418 thats not my isp thats them.

I just tried downloading it using my DSL line (640k/640k) and I got around 60k per second.

Still slow for me - This is in the UK, so am I. Hosted with www.dedicated-servers.co.uk

I'm getting it 50 initially and gradually decease to 20+kb/sec..

Bursted to 220 KB/s then average about 183

The access time is amazing, it doesn't even take 1/5 of a sec for it to give me the save file box, but I don't get more than 5kb/sec and I'm on a 10Mbit in Sweden!

Ok - I've narrowed down the probelm to http as when I used SmartFTp to download it I got an average of 55KB/sec - Gonna try a reboot to see if that helps, althoguh it's only been up for 9 days since the last reboot! Is there any configuration that would limit the bandwidth of hhtp but not ft on the server? Thanks for the help guys... (and girls!)

Yes, when you setup a site there is a limit transfer speed option. You may have it checked for that particular site.

Run a traceroute from your machine to your server. There could be a very slow hop somewhere that is really slowing things down for you but not others.

Cobalt's due have bandwidth throttling. Also, some hosts have caps on the bandwidth usage. You may want to check that as well.

Generally, a good FTP server is typically faster than HTTP due to overhead issues. However, there are many FTP servers that are not as good as Apache at delivering files. You may want to check your FTP servers config files.

Also, slow disk speed can cause slow download of files. If you are running IDE disk, make sure UDMA is enabled.

On a lightly loaded server, you do not notice disk performance issues with web documents because of their small size, but you will notice it when you download large files.

Use
hdparam -Tt /dev/hda
to test your disk read speads. Should be in the 20MB range and the cache read should be much higher. If they are in the 2-4MB range, then you need to tweak your disk.

HD Param was an invalid command :( and the tracert didn't show anything either... But I don't think it's a disk issue as the FTP from exactly the same place works fine, so somewhere along the ling (nearer the server I'm guessing) http are sharing narrow bandwidth or something... The server is not busy at all so I'm still confused as to why this is a problem.

13KB/sec off of cable. I normally get 450KB on good connections.

Hmmm - Does anyone know what the default bandwidth limit is on a RAQ4, I've not got any in place but just set them to 1024 (2 ips) which seems to of helped a bit (I just got it to download at 35KB/s) but I'm still not happy with the speeds, it doesnt seem right. I just used opera to open another site (www.emailremind.co.uk) and it averaged the download of graphics etc. at 8KB/s on my 64KB/s connection...

Ok, i just tried from a T3 in the UK and it took 2min 3 seconds to get the file.

it said it was incomming at about 65-70KB/s thats not too bad a speed but obviously faster is better :-)

hdparam should be hdparm
You my Raq4 I get about 17.5 MB/sec read and >50MB/sec cache on a lightly loaded sysem

If you are getting great speeds on FTP but not HTTP, this suggestes that somewhere only HTTP packets or Port 80 connections are getting scruntinized. You may check with your hosting facility about firewalls and bandwidth connections.

I just got 180k/sec from New York, USA area on high speed connection. This is not too bad. If the slow times are intermittent, there may just be a bottleneck along the route to your server.

Yea, I think somewhere along the line port 80 is being slowed down... judging by the response so far it has to be nearer my server rather than my ISP as it's not only me effected. It does seem to be a time issue as well as first thing this morning for me I go 40kb/s on the http download and now it's back down to 10kb/s and less! Yet the FTP way is giving me about 50kb/s... Any ideas on how I can check where the bottle neck is? And the hdparm doesn't work either, still get command not found?

it seems the problem is down to your ISP's network, a trace route from visual route identifies the problem !!

the trace is attached

Well I've bought up this problem with dedicated-servers who have asked cobalt for some support - It seems slightly better today (got a whol 19kb/s out of it) but it's still below what I think I should be getting. Are there any cache parameters I can play with? Would only 128kb of memory cause this? (hdparm didn't work either!)

This may simply be a network problem. I also did a couple of traces and got some very slow hops nearer your server. You co-lo facility must be having problems or cannot handle bursts of traffic.

The only way to know it is your machine for sure is to download from another machine behind the same router. If this machine gives you slow results, you can probably be assured that this is a network issue and not a machine configuration issue.