I can't figure this out, but it seems like the sort of thing someone else
here will say "oh, I know what causes that".
I've been tracking a smattering of customer complaints about downloads just
stopping, and finally was able to reproduce it. I Googled for large file
downloads and took the first one that came up:
https://www.futurehosting.com/network-test-files/
and found the downloads would stop repeatedly at the same point. Different
for each file and server location, but the same for repeated downloads of
the same file. For example the 100MB file from Michigan kept stopping at
8MB. It chugged along fine, then slowed dramatically and stopped, with no
traffic either direction. Yet a ping to the same IP address never had a
problem.
Note it is NOT the computer, the server, or last mile radios. I was able to
see it going only through backhaul radios and routers, no AP/CPE. And it
works fine with the same computer here at my house on AT&T.
Tomorrow I need to chase it back toward my network border. I am not
conversant with Wireshark so have not done that yet, am not looking forward
to it. One pesky customer claims to have done that and seen TCP retries and
out-of-order packets, maybe he's right, maybe he is just misinterpreting the
data.
So .............. what can cause HTTP downloads to stall and stop, while
other stuff like Youtube and Hulu and speedtest.net are fine?
