FTP Download Speed Problems

[LarryK]

We are not satisfied with FTP download transfer rates via BH. We are also not satisfied with the explanations regarding what we feel is degraded FTP service. To encourage BH to investigate this problem or openly reveal what issues at BH might be chocking the speed, we will post FTP rates from BH and "control" sites that offer clocked download rates, as BH does not offer such a service.

We understand there is not a 1:1 relationship between the rates we get from BH and the "control," but the controls do offer valid feedback regarding overall internet traffic and potential insight into reasons why transfer rates might degrade.

Our setup:

ISP: Verizon NY
Our Location: Bronx, NY, 9,600' from Central Office
Our Connection: DSL 3Mbps/764 Kbps up/down, 3Mbps/660 Kbps confirmed by Verizon
Our System: Switched network connecting 3GHz/1GB Pentium based computers running current, fully patched XP Home edition
Load: No other uploads or downloads running during tested downloads
IP Address: Not shared
Server: 208.186.220.58

Time of test: Noon, Eastern Time Zone
File Size: 223.5 MB
FTP Client: BH "Unlimited FTP" system
Time to Transfer per BH Clock: 43 minutes, 44.2 seconds
Composite Transfer Rate per BH Clock: 85.1 MB/s

Control 1 - Internet Frog: 2.87 Mbps (358.7 KB/s)
Control 2 - Speakeasy Seattle, WA: 2.808 Mbps (351 KB/s)
Control 2 - Speakeasy LA, CA: 2.806 Mbps (350.8 KB/s)

Discussion:

Controls runs done immediately after BH test completed.

The BH data transfer profile appears to indicate an artifical throttling. Initial connection began at 150 MB/s, but quickly (1 to 2 seconds) dropped to about 120 MB/s, where it stayed for perhaps two minutes, before dropping back to abut 97 MB/s within 5 minutes. From there the transfer rate slowly eased to about 85 MB/s for the remainder of the transfer of the 223 MB.

This pattern of transfer from BH has been virtually invariant, with only the starting and ending data rates differing from transfer to transfer. We have rarely seen initial transfer rates much above 250 KB/s and rarely see "settled" transfer rates above 85 MB/s. Before the switch to the unshared IP address, we would routinely see "settled" transfer rates below 35 MB/s. If random general connection or traffic problems were choking the FTP transfer rate, we would not see the same data rate profile, transfer after transfer, at any time of the day or night.

We also note our cable-based clients routinely upload multi-hundred MB files to us at rates faster than we can download them.

BH appears to be serving downloaded FTP data at perhaps 25% of rates routinely provided by others. According to BH support the servers are capped at 3 Mbps for downloads, but there are no other caps in place. BH therefore states any degrading of FTP transfers is not because of them, but because of problems outside of their control.

We feel the above described transfers and the profile of the transfers refute the BH position that they are not in control of the FTP download rates.

We will continue to post FTP rates on a regular basis to keep this issue before BH management and the BH user community.

Thanks,

LarryK

www.spectralmastersdi.com
larry@spectralmastersdi.com

[thinkingbear]

I see the exact same throttling effect down to the same download speeds you report when downloading large files via http. My bandwidth from other sites seems fine, just not my own :confused:
screen shot (http://kupras.net/img/bndwdth.jpg)

[intrigue]

I realize this is a user to user forum and not a place to complain against BH, BUT....

I have an open ticket with BH for EXACTLY the problem indicated in this thread. It's been going back and forth now for a couple of months. On the plus side, the support staff has responded to my emails and have tried to find possible solutions to the issue. On the minus side, I was told by one engineer that in reality, there is no "problem" per se. What we are seeing is actually a "CAP" that BH has put in place to limit download speeds to the FTP. Hello? where did this come from? It's not advertised on their site (not that I could find anyway).

I asked how we can turn off the cap. The response was that we just needed to upgrade to a dedicated IP account. Well, guess what? we did that and we still have a cap problem.

Here's how I know it's BH limiting the downloads: my uploads run at 200+KB/s which is perfectly normal. My downloads are between 60-80KB/s on average, with an occasional spike to 120. Either way, this speed is virtually unusable to us. Every other FTP site I log into, I can achieve downloads 5-10x this speed.

I'd be happy to keep testing this for the tech's at BH, but the bottomline is that the problem repeatedly traces back to their service infrastructure. If the problem were downstream from BH, I would never be able to get FULL SPEED UPLOADS, which I am always seeing!

We really do like Bluehost. They offer very good features at a very competitive price. Yeah, there are downtimes, but every host has that. But this FTP issue is just mind boggling. I don't know why this cap is necessary. THey are advertising bazillions of GB in bandwidth. so what's the problem? why penalize people for downloading? Is this a permanent "feature" we can expect from now on? I hope someone "higher-up" at BH (Mr. Heaton, perhaps?) will address the matter by removing the cap or at least telling us what our options are to get full download speed.

[bboysteele]

There have been other threads on this same subject. What has been said in those other threads is that ftp is capped on Bluehost. If you get a dedicated IP, you will still be capped but it allows you to download at a better speed. I don't know what the exact difference is though. They do this because this is a web hosting site not a ftp hosting site so they limit the speed on ftp to allow for faster http traffic (which is not capped). This is the reason for it though and as far as I have heard this is not going to change anytime in the near future. Who knows though!!!

[aceofspades]

I am so happy i enabled SSH because FTP is SOOO slow. Even SFTP is slow. The only way I can upload large files is by making them into a tar, uploading them through cpanel, and untarring them. FTP is WAY too slow. I tried to upload a 1 GB tar and after 10 hours it failed when it was at 50%.

[bboysteele]

I am so happy i enabled SSH because FTP is SOOO slow. Even SFTP is slow. The only way I can upload large files is by making them into a tar, uploading them through cpanel, and untarring them. FTP is WAY too slow. I tried to upload a 1 GB tar and after 10 hours it failed when it was at 50%.
From what I heard, they don't cap ftp upload speed only ftp download speeds. If your getting a slow connection then it should be due to your service provider. Unless they capped upload speeds as well but my ftp upload speed seems to max out my connection so I wouldn't believe they have done this.

[bboysteele]

Composite Transfer Rate per BH Clock: 85.1 MB/s


LarryK, I just wanted to double check and make sure 85.1 MBps is suppost to be 85.1 Kbps because the first one would be very fast. :D

[LarryK]

Yes, my typo. It should have been 85.1 KB/s (Kilo Bytes per second). I wouldn't be beefing if it were MB/s.

lk

[intrigue]

There have been other threads on this same subject. What has been said in those other threads is that ftp is capped on Bluehost. If you get a dedicated IP, you will still be capped but it allows you to download at a better speed. I don't know what the exact difference is though. They do this because this is a web hosting site not a ftp hosting site so they limit the speed on ftp to allow for faster http traffic (which is not capped). This is the reason for it though and as far as I have heard this is not going to change anytime in the near future. Who knows though!!!

where on the BH site does it say this?? They DO say they offer FTP as a feature in their hosting package, so I'm not understanding your explanation. Can you tell me which company advertises themselves as an "FTP host" specifically?

from what I was told by a techie, this cap was only RECENTLY implemented. It was not in place previously. So, again I ask, why do they need to limit the FTP download speed now if they have SO much bandwidth to play with? I realize they have the right to implement service changes at any time, but this was never "announced" to BH customers.

[bboysteele]

where on the BH site does it say this?? They DO say they offer FTP as a feature in their hosting package, so I'm not understanding your explanation. Can you tell me which company advertises themselves as an "FTP host" specifically?

from what I was told by a techie, this cap was only RECENTLY implemented. It was not in place previously. So, again I ask, why do they need to limit the FTP download speed now if they have SO much bandwidth to play with? I realize they have the right to implement service changes at any time, but this was never "announced" to BH customers.
It doesn't show anywhere on BH about this. I have just read this in other threads that are on this site that customers have written. Here (http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=2474&page=3&highlight=slow+download+speed) is a link to one of the threads. You also have to remember is might not be the amount of bandwidth they have a month but the amount of bandwidth that there connection can handle at a given time. If a cap like this is not there and you had , for example, 100 users downloading through ftp a 600MB file at there top speed then it could/would bottleneck the other users/customers that are trying to surf these sites. FTP connections are usually up for a good amount of time were as http traffic is up for a matter of seconds. This commany is designed for webhosting and not server (FTP) hosting so they catter to make http fast. There isn't exactly a ftp hosting company but companies that offer server hosting are more geared for this. Those companies allow you to run email, ftp, application, domain, etc services from their servers so they are usually less likely to cap bandwidth speeds. I don't know if this makes sense to you but I hope I explained it well enough. I am going to set up a ftp folder on my account so my friends and I can share files so I will be limited on these speeds as well. But it is a lot better than paying $75+ a month for a application/ftp/etc server.

[StrongBad]

You lot are lucky, I'm downloading at 7.5kb/s, and I'm on 8MB/s downstream. It's just peak time though, that'll go to about 60kb/s in 8 hours time.

And did you know that half a byte is called a nybble? I think that's probably the best thing I've ever heard in the history of ever...ever!

[intrigue]

It doesn't show anywhere on BH about this. I have just read this in other threads that are on this site that customers have written. Here (http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=2474&page=3&highlight=slow+download+speed) is a link to one of the threads. You also have to remember is might not be the amount of bandwidth they have a month but the amount of bandwidth that there connection can handle at a given time. If a cap like this is not there and you had , for example, 100 users downloading through ftp a 600MB file at there top speed then it could/would bottleneck the other users/customers that are trying to surf these sites. FTP connections are usually up for a good amount of time were as http traffic is up for a matter of seconds. This commany is designed for webhosting and not server (FTP) hosting so they catter to make http fast. There isn't exactly a ftp hosting company but companies that offer server hosting are more geared for this. Those companies allow you to run email, ftp, application, domain, etc services from their servers so they are usually less likely to cap bandwidth speeds. I don't know if this makes sense to you but I hope I explained it well enough. I am going to set up a ftp folder on my account so my friends and I can share files so I will be limited on these speeds as well. But it is a lot better than paying $75+ a month for a application/ftp/etc server.

basically, my beef regarding the cap is two-fold. First, they didn't tell anybody that they did this, UNTIL the problem was presented to them. That's just bad customer service. I know BH has sent emails out before, and they have posted announcements on their site, and that's GOOD. So why did they "sweep this under the rug"? It's as if they were hiding something from their customers purposely, and only now that they are called out on it do they admit that it's the new policy.

Secondly, a cap, in and of itself, is not the end of the world. I don't object to a cap per se. The problem I DO have is that the resulting speed is virtually unusable to people who rely on FTP to transfer large files. My old host gave me a download of 1,500KB/s. That's FAST. But we paid a fortune for that and eventually we determined it wasn't cost effective. The package we have with BH is great in comparison, I totally agree with you, but a paltry download speed of 60-80KB/s is embarrassingly slow. I would be happy just to get speeds that EQUAL my uploads (about 200+KB/s). That's bearable and I think (just my opinion) that BH could handle upping the cap limit to that number.

My basic point is this: slowing things down so drastically is unnecessary. A limit is ok, IF it's reasonable. With today's broadband internet access so widespread, why is BH regressing its service to the days of dial-up?

Regarding the idea that BH is a "web" host and not a "server" host, I think you mean "shared server" vs. "dedicated server". By having your own site on your own dedicated box, nobody else is affected by it. You can run all the processes you want and max it out without harming any other sites. Sure, that's a nice thing to have, but to move to a dedicated server JUST to download a couple of large files is overkill. As I mentioned before, our old host didn't seem to care about capping download speeds on a shared box. We didn't need to upgrade to their "enterprise" package to achieve decent download speeds. It just WORKED. And I think BH can make it work also, IF they choose to do so. I'll be watching closely to see how the issue continues to play out.

[intrigue]

And did you know that half a byte is called a nybble? I think that's probably the best thing I've ever heard in the history of ever...ever!

very interesting. did not know that. so I looked it up and sure enough, there are a few other neat terms for multiple bits. for instance (if I read it right), four nybbles would equal one chawmp or one playte.

[intrigue]

getting back to the cap issue for a second, I want to make one other point. How is capping ONLY the download speed helping BH conserve its bandwidth? For example, if I were to upload a 126MB file, without an upload cap, it will do that at the full speed my ISP will allow over the internet to the BH server. Currently, my uploads are about 200+KB/s. If it takes, say, 10 minutes to upload this file (don't know for sure that it's 10, just picking an arbitrary number), that means it is using up 10 minutes of bandwidth on BH's server.

Now.... if I DOWNload that same file, it can take over an hour to get the whole thing. That means I am now tying up the BH server for a LOT longer, even though I'm using a smaller fraction of the pipeline.

which is better for the other users on our BH box, tying up their server for an hour+ or a mere few minutes and then getting off the FTP?

[bboysteele]

intrigue, I can see your point about the cap. One thing I wish they would do those is make the cap higher for accounts that have a dedicated IP. I hear that the speed is suppose to be better but from what I read it is not that much better. On the shared and dedicated servers, that is not exactly what I mean. A group that I use to associate with had a FTP server on a shared server that was designed for other applications besides just webpages. True though that most are dedicated servers. Now as far as your arguement about why it is better to download at a slower speed but takes more time or a higher speed and a lost less time, only BH would now. It could be the number of accounts and domains they have. And also remember that they know how much bandwidth is used and how close they are at for maxing out their line speed. I can only assume that if they opened it up more then it will hurt their service. I just hope that someone can get some good answers to these questions and post the info on here.

[icedancer]

Same here - 8MB/s line and BH cap the upload speed - getting 4kB/s yesterday