# DOD Download Speed



## narrod (Jul 26, 2007)

Thanks to the collective knowledge of this group my DOD is installed and working properly. Using DSL the download speed is painfully slow. It seems the only practical thing to do is to download at night. Not really "on demand" but OK. I assume the HD downloads, when available, will be even slower. Anyone using a cable modem? How is the download speed?


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## FriscoJoe (Mar 22, 2007)

narrod said:


> Thanks to the collective knowledge of this group my DOD is installed and working properly. Using DSL the download speed is painfully slow. It seems the only practical thing to do is to download at night. Not really "on demand" but OK. I assume the HD downloads, when available, will be even slower. Anyone using a cable modem? How is the download speed?


Same here with cable modem. I thought (hoped?) that once the download started, it would keep up so that you could start watching within minutes. That was not the case for me last night.

Perhaps the DOD servers are quite busy with all the new users playing with DOD for the first time??


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## jtn (Oct 18, 2007)

It is likely more demand on servers than anticipated by DirecTV. And variances in Cable / DSL providers and speed of connections. Throttling etc.


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## hasan (Sep 22, 2006)

You ought to try it at 256K, which is what we have out in the sticks. 

It does work, but overnight would be considered "fast" in my situation. (This is not D*'s fault, of course). I just wanted to test it and it worked just fine.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I think it might be helpful if you did a speed test at one of your favorite sites (I prefer dslreports.com) after the download to see what your local download speed is.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

This thread has been moved to the On Demand forum.


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## dixoncider (Sep 10, 2006)

Pretty fast for me, 25min sd content in about 4 or 5 minutes. The menu sucks but ondemand is pretty cool. Content will be the key here


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## d max82 (May 23, 2007)

I used to be able to start the download and then start watching as soon as I could navigate back to my now playing list, even on 2 hour movies with no problem. In the last couple of days it has become painfully slow taking hours to download and hour long show. I've checked my ISP speed and its as high as it ever was, so I think D*s servers are just under heavy load now with the masses able to access DOD


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## mikefeuer (Dec 12, 2006)

It took quite a while for what appears to be a full menu of available programs to appear, but it works well. I tried two programs, a 44 minute and the 4 minute intro/welcome to DOD. I wasn't paying a lot of attention but it seems to me that the download times were fairly long at about perhpas 75% of the time of the actual program. 

I have a 6MB DSL and using the Linksys WET11. I suspect the WET11 is a terrible drag. Can someone advise how either the new Linksys bridge or game adaptor would speed up downloads. 

I hadn't thought about it, but we were watching s show, recording another and added the DOD queue. Seems like a bonus ability. 

Even at the lower speed it doesn't really matter to me as it's not interfering with anything, but faster would be better. It is working well for me. I like the progress meter and the overall look and feel. It's a novelty and having Premier and all this HD now I doubt I'll make much use of it, but nice to have.


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## DConroy (Dec 15, 2005)

Cable here, and a 5 minute content took about 10 mins to download. Not truly fast, or instant. But...should the selection of content improve it could still be very useful.

So, for example, theres a PPV movie this month I want to see, but it doesnt happen to be showing in the 100s at the moment. I select it, start the d/l and just watch a previously recorded show for an hour, and bingo, movies ready. Still pretty impressive IMO.

My current issue, is there's just nothing on there I want right now.


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## robdec (Jul 13, 2007)

Comcast cable here. I downloaded a 45 min show in about 15 min. Not too bad I guess.


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## MikeR (Oct 6, 2006)

mikefeuer said:


> I have a 6MB DSL and using the Linksys WET11. I suspect the WET11 is a terrible drag. Can someone advise how either the new Linksys bridge or game adaptor would speed up downloads.


You are probably only getting 2-4 Mbps throughput with the WET11. Newer bridges or game adapter have the "g" standard (theoretically to 54Mbps, actual up to 20Mbps).....Or for futureproofing pre-N


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## jtn (Oct 18, 2007)

narrod said:


> Thanks to the collective knowledge of this group my DOD is installed and working properly. Using DSL the download speed is painfully slow. It seems the only practical thing to do is to download at night. Not really "on demand" but OK. I assume the HD downloads, when available, will be even slower. Anyone using a cable modem? How is the download speed?


If you do wireless get PRE-N since it can handle more speed (270mbps) which is good for HD and gaming. And the transmission is 4-12 X better than G wireless.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

This will give you some idea of your speed; http://www.speedtest.net/
If you're not close to 3 Mb/s, VOD is going to be painful. IMO


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## Wisegoat (Aug 17, 2006)

Downloaded a 25 minute show from Anime network in about 2 minutes. I have a 10MB pipe from TimeWarner. I wish you could download more than 1 thing at a time, however. My pipe can handle the load. Would also like to see more HD so I can test the speed of that.


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## narrod (Jul 26, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> This will give you some idea of your speed; http://www.speedtest.net/
> If you're not close to 3 Mb/s, VOD is going to be painful. IMO


Yeah, I know you are riight. I have a 802.11g network and slow (768kb) DSL service so upgrading to Pre-N is not going to help. I pay only $10 a month for DSL and Internet and don't want to upgrade and pay more. It cost me nothing to
activate DOD and I can adjust to downloading when I go to bed so the speed will not be an issue. It's a cool feature and another reason for moving to the HR20. It makes DirecTv more attractive to me and gives me one less reason to switch to a different provider.


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## jash (Sep 2, 2007)

earl,

can you ask the guys to put a speedtest on the hr20's so we can see what kind of speed it's really getting on the box, regardless of what the rest of our home network says it's doing?

thx


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## hells_bells (Jul 16, 2007)

mikefeuer said:


> It took quite a while for what appears to be a full menu of available programs to appear, but it works well. I tried two programs, a 44 minute and the 4 minute intro/welcome to DOD. I wasn't paying a lot of attention but it seems to me that the download times were fairly long at about perhpas 75% of the time of the actual program.
> 
> I have a 6MB DSL and using the Linksys WET11. I suspect the WET11 is a terrible drag. Can someone advise how either the new Linksys bridge or game adaptor would speed up downloads.
> 
> ...


Guess we just have to plan ahead and not try to watch the show immediately after we start the download.


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## cougar (Jul 6, 2007)

I downloaded my first DOD program this morning, a 2-hour standard def movie, it took 1 hour and 35 minutes to download. I have AT&T DSL, the 6.0 Mbps package. I have an ethernet cable connecting the HR20 to the router.

Networking the HR20 last night was a snap, and I woke up this morning to a long list of programs available for downloading.


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## mikefeuer (Dec 12, 2006)

cougar said:


> I downloaded my first DOD program this morning, a 2-hour standard def movie, it took 1 hour and 35 minutes to download. I have AT&T DSL, the 6.0 Mbps package. I have an ethernet cable connecting the HR20 to the router.....


That's very interesting for me. Same DSL and vendor, and your D/L time was still roughly 75% of the programs time in a wired system. Same as my wireless times the other day.


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## cougar (Jul 6, 2007)

mikefeuer said:


> That's very interesting for me. Same DSL and vendor, and your D/L time was still roughly 75% of the programs time in a wired system. Same as my wireless times the other day.


Hi Mike, the posts I've seen stating faster download times are usually from folks using cable, so are we really slow? I thought I was doing pretty well :lol:


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## mikefeuer (Dec 12, 2006)

cougar said:


> Hi Mike, the posts I've seen stating faster download times are usually from folks using cable, so are we really slow? I thought I was doing pretty well :lol:


While my 6MB service tests well, certainly there are some cable services offering up to twice that speed now.

I did try something again last night and it was a bit better, but I think too that we will be subject to server loads at peak times from Directv. The only time I've tried was around 9 or 10 PM eastern.

With your direct connection experience I suspect a lot must be server load limitations.


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## smcpike (Oct 23, 2007)

I have 6 MB "Phone Company" DSL service (get about 4.5-5MB routinely down).

I just got activated today (first post) and started a download of UltraViolet (Widescreen) from Starz (1 hr 35 min in length). After 12 minutes it was at 16% and I started it playing as it seems to be downloading faster than 1:1. I'm now 21 minutes in to the movie and its downloaded over 50%. Speed is fine for me... i expect i could've started watching after 5 minutes.

Now quality is another thing... but i never watch SD so i'll hold my opinion there until i see some HD content.

Overall speed wise thus far - pleasantly surprised (for SD).


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

I have never gotten more than 2mb/s on my 8mb connection.


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## jash (Sep 2, 2007)

cougar said:


> I downloaded my first DOD program this morning, a 2-hour standard def movie, it took 1 hour and 35 minutes to download. I have AT&T DSL, the 6.0 Mbps package. I have an ethernet cable connecting the HR20 to the router.
> 
> Networking the HR20 last night was a snap, and I woke up this morning to a long list of programs available for downloading.


cougar,

use this site to test what you are truly getting to your dsl modem:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

as for download times, report back what you really get after a good test. i had one jack in my house without a dsl filter causing too much noise. i'm now up to a consistent 5 mbs for the first time.


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## ke3ju (Aug 18, 2006)

Here's a question...what format are the VOD files in...MPEG2 or MPEG4? You'd think since the HR20 can do MPEG4, that they'd utilize it to save bandwidth...


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## MikeR (Oct 6, 2006)

mikefeuer said:


> I did try something again last night and it was a bit better, but I think too that we will be subject to server loads at peak times from Directv. The only time I've tried was around 9 or 10 PM eastern.


Unlikely it will be from the Directv end, who is actually using Limelight Networks to store and distribute the content. (provide services to Amazon Unbox, Netflix, Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PS3)
http://www.limelightnetworks.com/


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## cougar (Jul 6, 2007)

jash said:


> cougar,
> 
> use this site to test what you are truly getting to your dsl modem:
> 
> ...


I'll test it when I get home tonight. I did a speed test on another site a few weeks ago and I was getting better than 5.0, I don't remember the exact number. I need to do another test because I moved to another jack since that test. Thanks for the link


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

cougar said:


> I'll test it when I get home tonight. I did a speed test on another site a few weeks ago and I was getting better than 5.0, I don't remember the exact number. I need to do another test because I moved to another jack since that test. Thanks for the link


Here is another site with more servers to check: http://www.speedtest.net/

Also remember that while you may get a good test from these sites, that VOD is a much larger download and may have problems with your ISP. My ISP is upgrading their system for their own VOD roll out.
Both of these sites show I have my "full speed", yet VOD doesn't always come at that speed [almost never] and the last time I used it, it popped up with the message telling me there was a problem with my internet connection, about 10 min into the download. I selected fix later and it continued without further problem.


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## m4p (Apr 12, 2007)

I have only downloaded one movie. It took me roughly 2 hours to download a 2 hour movie. I have a wireless bridge connected to my HR20 (the Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP) and my router connected to my PC is the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. Both of these are 802.11G with MIMO performance (not sure if that really helps or not). I also have DSL with a download speed of 2.5 to 2.6 mb according to the speed tests that someone posted a link to. As I was downloading the movie, I was able to start watching it after a few minutes. Just wish they had some high def content though.


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## Chuck W (Mar 26, 2002)

I noticed this issue too. It seems the download speeds just aren't up to par with it being "on demand". We tried viewing the movie "Open Season", last weekend. I started the download and even waited about 5 minutes. We started viewing the movie and within about 25-30 minutes, the movie stopped and we had 
"caught up" to the point of download.

I have a 10mbps download speed and I know it was working at about that, at the time(I used the same speakeasy site mentioned in this thread).


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Chuck W said:


> I noticed this issue too. It seems the download speeds just aren't up to par with it being "on demand". We tried viewing the movie "Open Season", last weekend. I started the download and even waited about 5 minutes. We started viewing the movie and within about 25-30 minutes, the movie stopped and we had
> "caught up" to the point of download.
> 
> I have a 10mbps download speed and I know it was working at about that, at the time(I used the same speakeasy site mentioned in this thread).


You must have a "choke point" somewhere in your ISP. If I can get my "3 Mb/s", 30 min buffer would have worked. My last d/l was in the middle of the night [with my error message] and came through at 1:1, by the info shown [1:55 show that started & stopped in 1:55]. FWIW


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## cougar (Jul 6, 2007)

jash said:


> cougar,
> 
> use this site to test what you are truly getting to your dsl modem:
> 
> ...


Now I'm getting better than 6.0 from speakeasy and speedtest.net. I didn't know that was possible from an "up to" 6.0 DSL package! :eek2:

I'm okay with my DOD download speeds, it seems the people who download faster usually have cable broadband connections.


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## twodutys (Feb 3, 2007)

Well with a 7.2mbps DSL line I can start watching a program after seconds. I don't wait for the whole program to download so I don't know how long that would take.


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## sunking (Feb 17, 2004)

Unfortunately I only get about 1.5M/s down and it's pretty frustrating. Waiting 50%+ for something to finish before viewing not my cup of tea. Can anyone confirm the format that these movies are in? If they aren't mpeg-4 I think they should do some converting. That might help quite a bit.

Not to mention reducing file sizes is friendly for the internet environment. There's only so much bandwidth out there.:grin:


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

This morning I'm getting a pathetic 800kbps download on DoD. I ran a speedtest WHILE I AM DOWNLOADING and this is what I got..



So it is definitely not my internet connection.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

dervari said:


> This morning I'm getting a pathetic 800kbps download on DoD. I ran a speedtest WHILE I AM DOWNLOADING and this is what I got..
> 
> 
> 
> So it is definitely not my internet connection.


"Definitely"? 
It still could be your ISP connecting to D*. Clearly the video is being choked while a local server "burst" isn't.


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

veryoldschool said:


> "Definitely"?
> It still could be your ISP connecting to D*. Clearly the video is being choked while a local server "burst" isn't.


That's not a local burst. In any event, I have the DoD download going and also a ReplayTV receive going now. The ReplayTV receive is getting 1.2mb/s and the DTV download is still getting 800kb/s. 

I just ran another speedtest and got the following from a Los Angeles server to rule out the "local burst" theory.



3.6mb/s down with me already using 2mb/s, so I'll still say...it's definitely not my ISP - locally at least.

It appears that DTV is using Limelight Networks for their video hosting. My firewall traffic logs show http requests from the HR20 to 69.28.159.141, which RDNS'es to rdcds4.iad.llnw.net which I think may be a "Content Distribution Server". Perhaps IAD is Washington, DC?


```
[[email protected] init.d]# traceroute 69.28.159.141
traceroute to 69.28.159.141 (69.28.159.141), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  stargate.ebaymom.net (192.168.100.1)  1.233 ms  1.115 ms  1.100 ms
 2  * * *
 3  REMOVED  20.671 ms  12.157 ms  11.696 ms
 4  te-9-1-ur02.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net (68.86.106.150)  13.136 ms  9.270 ms  9.720 ms
 5  te-9-1-ur01.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net (68.86.106.154)  12.238 ms  10.227 ms  9.405 ms
 6  te-9-2-ar01.d1stonemtn.ga.atlanta.comcast.net (68.86.106.158)  26.131 ms  22.123 ms  11.887 ms
 7  te-9-1-ar01.b0atlanta.ga.atlanta.comcast.net (68.86.106.1)  11.778 ms  12.662 ms  12.994 ms
 8  64.209.107.54 (64.209.107.54)  13.634 ms  11.959 ms  14.110 ms
 9  64.209.107.53 (64.209.107.53)  114.853 ms  109.269 ms  18.194 ms
10  64.214.140.78 (64.214.140.78)  12.190 ms  11.392 ms  14.706 ms
11  ve5.fr4.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.119.194)  14.100 ms  11.911 ms  13.960 ms
12  tge1-2.fr4.iad.llnw.net (69.28.172.34)  28.754 ms  28.482 ms  29.157 ms
13  ve5.fr3.iad.llnw.net (69.28.171.213)  30.763 ms  33.438 ms  36.268 ms
14  rdcds4.iad.llnw.net (69.28.159.141)  29.597 ms  34.837 ms  38.193 ms
[[email protected] init.d]#
```
Acceptible latency to them. I wish I had a way to do a reverse traceroute FROM them.

Speedtest to Washington, DC is great...



I really wish I could figure out what the secret to multi-mb/sec downloads is. It look over an hour to download a family guy episode.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

dervari said:


> That's not a local burst. In any event, I really wish I could figure out what the secret to multi-mb/sec downloads is. It look over an hour to download a family guy episode.


Well please post it if you ever do find out.
I have my ISP's western regional network guru trying to figure it out.
I have only a 3 Mb/s connection and my HR-20 seems to pull only 1.5 Mb/s.

What happens if you d/l in the middle of the night?


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

dervari....what program are you using to see the
speed of the hr20 DL's....thanks


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

I'm doing SNMP and Netflow traffic monitoring on the switch port that the HR20 is connected to. I use a unix box primarily but you can download PRTG for Windows if you have a router or switch that supports SNMP.

http://www.paessler.com/prtg


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## ccr1958 (Aug 29, 2007)

thanks i'll give it a try


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## michaelyork29 (Jun 22, 2007)

So the question remains for an expert on the forum or a D* employee familiar with the situation:

Is DirecTV (or LimeLight) screwing around with download speeds?


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## michaelyork29 (Jun 22, 2007)

I'm having the same problem as others here. I have a 10mb connection, but can't download programs too fast...It takes about 45 min for a 28 minute show...


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

I wonder if in my case Global Crossing could be the culprit. It appears that LimeLight has a node in Atlanta (ve5.fr4.atl1.llnw.net. It appears to hand off from LimeLight to Global Crossing and finally to Comcast.


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

Well, I have ruled out Sandvine as a culprit. I ran a packet capture and saw no RST packets incoming.


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## jtn (Oct 18, 2007)

I have noticed that with a new router the download speed is quicker after Comcast fixed my RG6. I had a tree branch fall on it and it knocked it out of place, so I was getting intermittent Internet on my computer. They came out today, and I also bought the new router today (Linksys WRT54GS) and it seems to be fine. I downloaded three programs. On one program it stopped just before the commercial, but I don't care about that. I don't believe Comcast is conspiring to sabotage my signal with DirecTV via Internet, they don't know what I am downloading.


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## gcisko (Sep 27, 2006)

narrod said:


> Thanks to the collective knowledge of this group my DOD is installed and working properly. Using DSL the download speed is painfully slow. It seems the only practical thing to do is to download at night. Not really "on demand" but OK. I assume the HD downloads, when available, will be even slower. Anyone using a cable modem? How is the download speed?


My download testing was fairly OK. It was not super fast, but also not super slow. What is your DSL speed?


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