How can you speed up downloads?

Answer 1

The first issue is this: can you choose the source server?

You may be able to ping the resource server to see what the connection looks like or trace route to see if there is a slow router on your connection.

The usual bottleneck up-loading is your internet connection, but you should see an improvement by moving off, say, DSL to fibre optic when downloading. But nothing will change if your own last link is a poor wireless connection.

Are you writing to a fast drive on a fast connection? External drives are usually slower. Is your internal drive correctly partitioned and defragmented for your tasks? Download to \temp on its own partition where the OS is not writing its own log files. Defrag that partition and keep it clean.

Download to a better positioned server on your corp intranet and then copy or read from that server. Get IT tech advice on decompress if that is slow. Again, an IT tech or staff programmer can script that for you if the delay is affecting a mission critical process rather than you missing a chance to stand and stretch. If this is your annoying first task of the day, get it scheduled to run before you arrive - but read the log or request an informative script report. I use Rebol, but Python is known to most IT programmers.

Tip: have a tech write the result with size and date to a text area of your homepage; clear browser cache when you leave; refresh your home page when you arrive. Start using the CRC check for the file if it is known.

Your own virus check at the end of the download may be taking more time than the download itself. Skip that step with a script at your risk.

For very large files, having a spare CPU core or a spare processor and a large non-fragmented hard drive might make for slight improvement - but downloading is not what occupies many CPU cycles and should be running as a background process using cycles as available.

The note below on IDM and the like is for the case when downloading many files at the time where most of your time is spent on download-related tasks. It is unlikely to affect the speed of a single large file download as sometimes claimed.

You can yourself write a script and set it to run as a high-priority process or write a small app to use a large buffer - but with what ROI? Is the download critical to a business process? Then set a cron in crontab or re-think why the whole file is being sent each time. Can you switch from XML to JSON? From JSON to binary serialized objects (marshalling/unmarshalling) ?

Again, a question of ROI for time and effort looking into this when your OS would let you schedule the task with less effort. See: iOS 6 'Power Nap' approach.

Answer 2

There are ways to speed up your downloads, including:- Turning off or stopping unnecessary programs before you start. Download at quieter times of the day - such as late night, early morning - when most kids are in bed. Choosing to download from a closer source (if you have the choice)

Answer 3

Just use an download accelerator. eg: IDM, DAP