Slow version update

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

It's not a bug.

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Yeah you are right, its a feature

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Originally Posted by Kimikryo

Yeah you are right, its a feature

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Well a bad / poorly designed feature, but yes. :p

Usually, if you are able to update the moment the servers go down via file check, or the instant the check version button comes up, the wait isn't too bad. It's when the majority of people realize the servers are up / the update is available that things get crappy.

Just use a 3rd party source like all the cool kids. Downloading from POL is a pain and they should fix that.

Thing is that a lot of companies experience high bandwidth demand, this is handled in 2 different ways.

1. Add capasity to the system.
2. Do nothing and hope for the best.

Just because something has been broken "forever" doesent mean it is supposed to be that way.

not so much an issue with capacity of their system, as the way the updates are packaged. I pulled down the update list file at 2.6Mb...then the downloads bounced from 200k to 1Mbit as it limped along (I monitor it to get a better picture of how long it will actually take).

It's an issue with the difference between sending 2000 small files in rapid succession, vs one zip file of all those small files as a single download. All that overhead generated from all the extra acknowledgements from starting/stopping all those little files bogs everything down. Couple that with some of the screwy bandwidth throttling policies and you have a nasty mix of things working against you.

So, basically what we've got is hundreds of thousands of users spamming the network for 1700 tiny files and stopping and starting every couple of seconds, injecting a crapload of lag into the process and possibly tripping up throttling from the service providers as well.

What they need to do is tweak the method for downloading the files first, then look into if there are bandwidth issues.

I would guess that part of the problem is playonline's netcode using a proprietary protocol instead of http(s).
Switching downloads to http(s) would make it way easier to integrate third-party cdn's to the download process.

Or they could just pack the patches into .exe files and distribute them to the community sites for them to distribute so the players can either just download with POL on all platforms or PC from alternate sites. Mirrors help.

The Dev team is just lazy. We all know it.

I'd go with 'incompetent', but your adjective might also be appropriate.

Going to HTTP as transport is a very bad idea because HTTP is a very inefficient protocol. There are way too many overheads for HTTP to handle that kind of transport. Better use would be FTP (or other derivative versions of file transfer protocol that's meant primarily for transfering of files with much lower overhead) if they want to go with a centralized method and BitTorrent if they want to go the P2P method.

[My gut tells me that SE is probably using some form of derivative of rsync currently and is the cause of the bottleneck]

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Originally Posted by Dreamin

Going to HTTP as transport is a very bad idea because HTTP is a very inefficient protocol

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The protocol isn't the problem, the bottleneck is that it can only be downloaded from S-E's servers, and their pipe is only so fat.

You can download UCAE multiple times from Amazon in the time it takes to apply this one update.