New Download System Test

[mikelove]

(posted this yesterday but then there was an issue with our server so I pulled it until that could be fixed)

Would a few of you in mainland China be kind enough to run a little test for us?

We currently host all of our add-on database downloads over Amazon's CloudFront CDN, which works pretty well in most of the world but doesn't actually have any servers in mainland China (only in HK and Singapore) and so can sometimes be rather slow / inconsistent for our China-based customers.

We're now trying out a new CDN that does have servers in mainland China, but since it costs about 50% more than CloudFront we'd like to make sure that 1) they're actually directing China-based users to those servers and 2) the speed difference is noticeable.

Here's a link to a test file on our old CDN:

http://d26r4pfa6wznjb.cloudfront.net/p2abc-100618.zip

And here's one on the new one:

http://cdn.pleco.com/iospackages/p2abc-100618.zip

We want to figure out three things:

1) Whether it's faster; download both files and see if there's a noticeable speed improvement with the second one.

2) Whether it's faster once the files have been loaded into the edge server caches; download each file a second time and see what the speed is like now.

3) Whether or not you're actually being directed to a server in China. Best way to do this is with a traceroute; on Windows, open up the Command Prompt and type in:

tracert cdn.pleco.com

On Mac, open up the Terminal and type:

traceroute cdn.pleco.com

The domain names of the servers at the end of the traceroute should give you some idea which data center you're talking to. (hkg versus jp versus kr etc) You probably shouldn't post the entire traceroute output as this would reveal your IP address.

Thanks!

 

[yoose]

Hi Mike,

I am in China and performed your test using Chrome 15.0.874.106 on OS X 10.7.2.
The first file was too slow so I ended up canceling it. I made several attempts, but the speed never went above 2KBps. The estimated time jumped around from 4 hrs to 2 days. The second file was decently fast took about 1:29 seconds, which I timed using the stopwatch on my phone, so not the most accurate. The second attempt on the second file was immediate, it might have been downloading from a local cache so im not sure. I restarted Chrome to try again and it was immediate. So then I used Safari 5.0.1 to try it. They took the same amount of time, about 1:25 on each attempt.

As for the traceroute. I get about 6 IPs before it all becomes * * *, all of them are in China, either Shanghai or Beijing.

let me know if you need anything else.

 

[ypslwmqzp]

From Taiwan, on Mac OSX tethered via my iphone.

First file: Ranged between 30K/s and 70K/s (im guessing it averaged about 50K/s

Second file: A very steady (approximate) 60K/s

First traceroute ends up here:
10 cwa-0056.asianetcom.net (203.192.170.113) 858.015 ms * *
11 te0-0-2-0.wr2.tpe0.asianetcom.net (61.14.157.205) 924.599 ms 1099.083 ms 847.954 ms
12 te0-2-0-0.wr2.hkg0.asianetcom.net (61.14.157.214) 823.220 ms 587.972 ms 659.999 ms
13 * gi15-0-0.gw5.hkg3.asianetcom.net (61.14.157.138) 601.420 ms 886.292 ms
14 * te2-2.gw1.hkg4.asianetcom.net (202.147.16.202) 1089.235 ms *
15 * * azn-0001.gw1.hkg4.asianetcom.net (203.192.153.94) 823.326 ms
16 * server-216-137-55-44.hkg1.cloudfront.net (216.137.55.44) 1037.438 ms *

Second traceroute ends up here:
11 * * te0-0-2-0.wr2.tpe0.asianetcom.net (61.14.157.205) 771.013 ms
12 te0-2-0-0.wr2.hkg0.asianetcom.net (61.14.157.214) 799.787 ms 921.532 ms 937.850 ms
13 * * *
14 * * te3-2.gw1.hkg4.asianetcom.net (202.147.16.198) 818.642 ms
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
21 * * *
22 * * *
23 * * *
24 * * *
25 * * *
26 * * *
27 * * *
28 *
and goes on forever, I assume its also twisting somewhere inside china.

 

[gato]

Here are my results from Shanghai. (I had thought the current download speed from mainland China was fine as long as one selected the HK server. Maybe you can make the server selection prompt more obvious?)

1. First file: Estimated time to download is 7 hours. Didn't continue.
Second file: Download completed in 1 minute 28 seconds.

2. Second try with second file took about 1 minute 25 seconds.

3. Traceroute cdn.pleco.com result (timed out):

1 1 ms <1 毫秒 2 ms [****]
2 13 ms 10 ms 9 ms 218.1.60.229
3 38 ms 9 ms 9 ms 218.1.60.165
4 9 ms 11 ms 9 ms 124.74.210.213
5 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 61.152.87.102
6 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 222.72.243.162 [CHINANET shanghai province network, still within mainland China]
7 * * * 请求超时。
8 * * * 请求超时。
9 * * * 请求超时。
10 * * * 请求超时。
11 * * * 请求超时。
12 * * * 请求超时。

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for the results, guys! It sounds like the new system is indeed a major improvement.

(I had thought the current download speed from mainland China was fine as long as one selected the HK server. Maybe you can make the server selection prompt more obvious?)

It is, and we could, but we'd like to be able to do everything from one URL to simplify matters.