On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Austin L. Denyer (SysAdmin.) as root wrote:
> "Stephen F. Bosch" wrote:
> >
> > Ron Stodden wrote:
> > >
> > > I feel sure the original questioner was referring to the ability of
> > > the Windows GetRight downloader to divide the file to be downloaded
> > > into up to 10 (number is user-specified) contiguous equal chunks and
> > > download them all in parallel, resulting in a single downloaded file,
> > > but up to 10 times faster download.
> >
> > 10 times faster? Me thinks you are dreaming. Bandwidth is bandwidth, and
> > there's only so much. Whether you set up 10 simultaneous downloads or do
> > only one, you are going to get the file in the same period of time.
>
> Bandwidth is only as fast as the slowest part of the route. It matters
> not that you have a T3 if the ftp server you connect to only has 64k
> ISDN. In a more realistic example, many of the popular ftp sites are
> overloaded, and rarely do you get maximum use of your bandwidth. By
> using multiple ftp servers you can maximize throughput.
>
> The GetRight feature allows connection to multiple ftp sites to get
> around that problem.
Okay, well, that was a feature I wasn't familiar with. It lets you connect
to more than one server? I can see how that would speed things up.
The cable providers in Canada server thousands of customers (at speeds of
up to 10 Mb/s) over relatively small pipes. I imagine there is also some
bandwidth throttling going on at the district routers, too.
My personal experience has been that concurrent connections to the same
server just results in a lot of slow connections.
-Stephen-
