I am trying to determine if it's a Renderosity problem, or if it's my ISP's issue. I'm on Comcast Cable, and previously have downloaded files at around 1 - 2 MB/sec. For the past several days, my speeds have been in the range of 40 - 60 KB/sec - slower than DSL, and only slightly better than dial-up.

If no one else is experiencing this, I'll have to go yell at Comcast (again). :-P

If it's a Rendo issue, I guess I'll just have to stop purchasing until things get worked out. But in my heart of hearts, I suspect it's my ISP.. I've attached a jpg that I sent to my ISP LOL!

Thanks for any input!

Rod

Go here:  http://www.speedtest.net/

Run the test

That will tell you if it's your ISP or not.

Additionally, Comcast has been known to do data capping, as well as has a reputation as one of the worst ISPs for online gaming due to their widely variable data speeds and random disconnections due to packet timeouts.

On Comcast's recommendation, I power-cycled my modem, and tested by re-downloading a file from my account. The download speed reached a blazing 113 KB/sec - almost on a par with DSL.

I'm still wondering if it's something to do with all the recent "improvements" to the Rendo website... I'll try some other sites, and a few other things...

Ah, technology......... LOL

Speed Test results attached...

Those applications give you the current traffic speed at the time the test runs based on data transmission back and forth to a specific point. Traffic, especially on a cable connection can fluctuate dependent on the amount of current traffic in your network segment

If you think you have good speed, you can run a ping test against Renderosity to check your speed to their servers in particular.

If you are having speed issues on the site, are you also having them at the same time on other sites?

If not, and you are using Chrome...

You can hit f12 to bring up the Developer Panel.

You can click Network, and reload the page.

This will generate a waterfall graph of everything the page is trying to load. If something is taking a very long time (this would be several hundred thousand miliseconds in what you describe) you would see it here and be able to pinpoint that it is something the site is attempting to load.

That said, as a art site Renderosity's pages are kinda heavy. The homepage for example is coming up for me as a 3.1meg weight all said and done over 107 requests. If your cable speed were to drop, this could cause you to easily hit the wait times you are mentioning.

I do not know Renderosity's network configuration at all, but most companies would use a Content Delivery Service, as well as a Application Level Caching system at minimum.

The CDN takes traffic off the webservers
The App Caching takes traffic off the database servers.

It would allow a site to service large amounts of traffic without crushing the database with requests and having to rebuild every page, every time. I suspect it's a lack of some combination of the above that causes the MySQL errors we see from time to time.

So while there are things Renderosity can do, I strongly suspect it relates to your connection to your ISP. I have tried to recreate your issue, and can not, which really makes me think it's either local to your ISP or your home network.

This is not an isolated event. My download speed is perfectly fine. I have no issues at other sites except this one. I've done the tests and all is fine, I download from C3D, RDNA, DAZ: no issues. This has been a recent event over the last week or so. In addition to that, ebots are not all arriving. I'm getting some, but not all. Though I have comments on a recent upload from about 2 or 3 hours ago, I have not received any notice that there have been any comments.

This whole site is really becoming useless. I'm not going to buy products here if I have to spend an evening downloading items that used to take moments or a few minutes to download. It is a real dis-service to vendors and buyers alike.

There are so many coments in posts about the slowness of the whole site. Even promotional images take five times as long to load up.

It's not browsers either. It's the same on IE, Chrome and Firefox and it's not just two of us.

Some explanation should come of this. These are serious issues. You are now jeopardizing your own livlihood with inaction and communication.l

I'm right there with you, Art. I don't know what is going on with this website - it's really a heartbreaker if you think about it.

I don't even bother to try and get the attention of the site admins/mods/whatever anymore. It's like they just don't care. I've left posts, several others have left posts, all trying to draw attention to issues that need fixed. I've not seen a response for months. and the issues still continue...

There is rarely a month I don't qualify for Render Rewards - and much as I hate to do it (many vendors here are friends) I may have to take a break from buying from the RMP, and go to DAZ, RDNA, Cornucopia, or wherever.

Maybe if the vendors start feeling the pinch, THEY can get the attention of whoever is holding Rendo's reigns. We don't seem to be able to....

This is truly becoming unacceptable. I have not receieved any ebots for over 12 hours including no notification of a response to this forum post.

It seems admins and mods are just hiding. What was once a professional site is diminishing quickly. Would not surprise me if this place has been hacked and bugged. Would explain a lot of issues.

This has been looked into and there is an issue with anyone using hotmail or live mail as far as ebots are concerned.  It seems we have been reported as spam and we are on their black list.  I have had a couple with this same issue report back to me today saying that now they are starting to receive again.

adorety I see that you have yahoo as your email account and I will go and check yahoo as well and see what is going on.

Thanks Tina. What you say is true. I should have had an "ah hah" moment earlier, but I checked my spam folder just now and found my missing ebots. Hopefully identifying them as NOT spam will fix this. I'll look through yahoo to see if I have to do anything further.

However, the issue with slow downloads has been ongoing for nearly a week. I even reset my network at home to see if something was up with that, but to no avail. I have normal download speeds on other sites, but here it is abnormally slow. I know for sure it did not used to be this way. Any thoughts or acknowledgements are appreciated.

I hate to sound like yet another whiner, but this is very frustrating and can hamstring buyers and vendors alike. I waited a week before posting a complaint and wanted to see if others were having the same issue and many are. It is not an issue with browsers either. I tried Chrome and Firefox and download speeds for IE, Chrome and FF were all about 90 kb as opposed to the usual XX MBs. That's as bad or worse than dial up.

Thanks for the heads up on the ebots.

Art D.

I've not had any issues with recieving the ebots, but I'm using my own domain name through my domain account with GoDaddy. I haven't used Hotmail for years - it seems they have a propensity for blocking the email you do want, but somehow lots of spam manages to get through..

As to the VERY slow download speeds, I just D/L'd several freebies from RDNA. My download speeds hit over 2MB / sec. Seems I owe Comcast an apology.

Tina, thanks for your reply RE: the ebots. Is anything being looked into as far as the slow downloads / site response? A lot of folks are leaving the site because of all the issues, it seems. I can confirm Art's comments about the slow downloads - I've tried all 3 browsers as well, reset my network, and tried the downloads on 3 different computers. D/L speeds are 50 - 100 KB/Sec at best.

Thanks,

Rod

RodS, if you don't mind please do a trace route to both sites and see if there are connectivity issues along the route.  We've tested the product downloads a few times recently and are getting much faster times from the locations we are testing from.

To do this, open a command prompt and type:

tracert www.renderosity.com

Hit enter and it should give you a hop report measured in milliseconds.  Post those results back so we can see if there's any obvious issue there. 

For comparison, I've also done a tracert to RDNA. I hope this helps you figure out what the problem is.

Thanks,

Rod

Rod - I also did a tracert yesterday and this morning and have noticed that the route was different this morning taking 3 less hops than yesterday.  The connection this morning is twice as fast as the connection I had yesterday, which is approximately 1 min for a 13MB download - it was 2 minutes yesterday.  If I can connect with that speed and you're getting something different then there are only 2 logical explanations:

1.) Load on the site at the time you are downloading is extremely high, or 

2.) It's something to do with the way your ISP is routing you to Renderosity.

Try again this morning and see if you get the same results in terms of the tracert and download speed/time.

Thanks. 

When I tried this afternoon, my results were virtually the same as yesterday. I'm posting screen caps of today's results:

Here is the tracert to Renderosity

Are your download speeds the same (slow)? I'm able to download a 13Mb file in under one minute right now.

Your statements above regarding site traffic or the route my ISP takes to connect to Renderosity fails to explain why others are experiencing exactly the same issues. No matter the time of day, the slowness is the same. Others at widely varying locations are having the same slow download issues as I am. See Art's post above.

The download speeds used to be far better. Up until about 2 weeks ago, I could download a 50MB file from Renderosity in a couple minutes. Now it takes forever. This all seems tied to the recent round of "improvements" to the site. Something here is broken, and needs attention.

I can go to other CG sites like RDNA or YURDigital and get DL speeds of 1 - 2 MB/sec. Only at Renderosity do my DL speeds fall to 90KB or lower.

Unfortunately I just don't have time to deal with downloads that take a half hour for a 50MB file. Until these issues get resolved (if they ever do) I'm just going to have to take a hiatus from ordering from the RMP.

I truly hope someone at BW or Renderosity can get these problems fixed. I have been a member of Rendo since 2009, and have come to really love this site - but lately it's becoming more frustrating than fun. Please, please, can we get all these issues fixed?

Thanks.

Sorry. I'm with Rod too. I live in the northeast and quite far from Rod. Others live in various parts of the country and are experiencing the same issue. As I've said, it did not used to be this way so it is very obvious that something has occured quite recently that is the cause. NOT time of day, location or browser.

I suggest you start looking for viruses and malware. If you think you can't get hacked, think again. ANY site can be hacked, ask them over at Cornucopia 3D. I know of three times it happened to them and what was the result? Problems with downloads and slow display of images.

Please look carefully and closely at your site, because my broadband is perfectly fine.

Thanks, AD

If it's a speed problem at the server level then everyone will be experiencing the same issue across the board - not just some.  That's just not the case. Virus and malware would equally affect everyone - not just some. 

We did upgrade several servers yesterday evening and made some system performance tweaks.  Let me know if you are still having the download speed issue.

adorety - can you please post a tracert to www.renderosity.com that we can also use for reference to try to identify any external issues.

Thanks.

What you say is logical. But it is odd that many, even if not all, are experiencing slow downloads and at the same speed.

I will do a tracert tonight. I never did it befoe, but will try to follow the instructions above.

Thanks, AD

In addition, let me know if you are also having the same speed issues when downloading freestuff items when you get a chance.

Thanks.

SOMETHING happened about two weeks ago.... Up to that point in time, I could get DL speeds of 1MB or better.

I'll try freestuf in a little while..

Hope this helps.

Whatever you did with freestuff, can you do it with the RMP download area?

 I put the tracert image in as an attachment because that was the only way I saw to add this kind of image file. If there's a better way, you can let me know.

Thanks, AD

Looks like it worked.

Art, I see you're getting a butt-load of timeouts as well.. Something's just not right, and I hope they can get the DL speeds for MP items back where they should be.. I'm still getting speeds of a little over 100KB.

I got the 2MB+ speeds from the free area as well.

Tried a test download again tody. No improvement. I guess Renderosity no longer wants my business. Fine - I'm gone.

To the admins, this is a real issue and not isolated to Rod and I. I'm trying to encourage others who are complaining about this issue to post in the forums and not just share the problem through the galleries.

I can't stress enough how this is only an issue with this site and not any other. Why downloads are super fast in the free section and not from the account page is that I guess one would be downloading from another site with the freebies. If freebies are not from off site, then I can only guess that something in the accounts section is bogging things down?

After posting tracert and making inquiries I'm not hearing any explanations. Is it my Comcast or is it a bug in your site or are there any other theories. It is frustrating to repeat that the only issue I have is this site and NOT ANY other website and not being believed. Those who are not having the issue may only use DSL or dial up and therefore not notice a difference. Unfortunately I'm ignorant on html and programming, so I am at the mercy of site IT.

We'd all hate to see Rod leave, so see what you can do to keep him and the rest of us around.

Thanks, AD

I'm just a dumb old man. However, when 'all' the other websites I visit run quickly (immediately before and after coming to and leaving from Renderosity) logic tells me something is different about 'only' Renderosity.

Which, having once been a long time/years member, causes me to say, ''What's new?''

TallPockets

Nice to hear from you TP! And as always, with a wise and logical way with words.

It has become very clear that the Admins/Powers-that-be here at Renderosity really don't give a hoot about us anymore. The few feeble responses above followed by silence, and lack of response just proves that point.

In 2012, I spent over $1800 in Rendo's marketplace - and I am only one out of many who frequent the marketplace. This is a reprehensible and irresponsible way to address (or NOT address) the concerns of cutomers who spend a considerable amount of thier hard-earned money.

I'm pretty much done with Rendo. I really don't need ANOTHER source of frustration. This site used to be fun. Not anymore.

Good job, Admins...

 I agree with Arthur, we have a problem and we need an answer. We'd all hate to see Rod leave indeed so please RR administrators work towards solving this problem!

Thanks

Monica (mgtcs)  

Hi everyone,

I do see that BWSupport is trying to sort this out and I will see if I can find out more on Tuesday morning.

Thanks

Awesome. Thanks for the message.

AD

Our data center has completed some maintenance to their core routers this morning.  Please perform the trace routes again and let me know if the speed issues have improved.

Thanks.

Thank you very much!

I know you guys are trying, but.....

I don't understand why I can download from the freestuff area at 2MB/sec, and the stuff I PAY for downloads at 50 - 100KB/sec. I can download at any of the CG sites I've done traces to at 1 - 2 MB/sec. But not at Rendo.

Are the marketplace items stored on a separate server? In a different location? Hosted by a different provider? There's a bottleneck somewhere - I just hope you're able to find it.

Rendo has the best CG marketplace with the most amazing variety of kick-a## products, and the most awesome vendors - bar none! It's a shame that these download speeds are causing many folks to stop purchasing here, or to leave the site completely.

Guess I've been spoiled by broadband.....

Thanks for trying.

Thanks for trying...

By all means keep us in the loop and I'm happy to help, though I'm sure there's little I can do.

Thanks, AD

I did a test download too and it was hovering between 90 kb/s and 100 kb/s. Essentially no change.

I continue to wish you and all of us luck in finding this issue.

AD

Horrible download speeds here today (6/21).

17 minutes for 46MB is not acceptable. 

I did a test today as well and was still getting the same 100 kb/s speeds. I can do no more. Others like yourself are going to have to boycott and complain for this to get done.

Yeah I know its not my provider. I just downloaded 4 items from RuntimeDNA and uploaded over a gig patch for Guild Wars 2 all at blazing speed while my DL's from Rendo are moving at a glacier pace. 

It seems very odd to me that we can download from the FREE section at 1 - 2 MB/sec, and yet the content you PAY for downloads at 100KB/sec - or less. It appears that as Art stated, the only way to get anyone's attention is to just boycott the marketplace until they get this issue fixed.

Continually runing trace routes to Renderosity proves nothing, nor does it fix anything... You can see Art's and my results above. This has been going on for almost a month, now. We're still stuck with unacceptably slow download speeds as our reward for purchasing at the RMP.

There is a bottleneck somewhere that is ONLY affecting the marketplace downloads. And ONLY at Renderosity.

I have a  LOT of stuff that I want to buy from the RMP. I would love to get Tom's City Blocks 14, but downloading that at 50 - 100KB/sec, it would take forever.

Come on, Rendo..... You can do better than this.

I just downloaded 3 products from the RMP. I paid $26.54 for these products. It took almost half an hour to download these products at speeds which varied from 85 - 230KB/sec. The downloads might start at 230KB, and would rapidly fall to around 100KB, and frequently would fall to around 85KB.

This will be the last purchase I make from Rendo's marketplace until these slow download speeds are adressed. I'm not holding my breath for this to happen. My purchases last year amounted to over $1800.00. That's a lot of money to spend at a merchant that doesn't seem to care about its customers' concerns.

There are massive issues with this website. It takes between 30 - 40 seconds to go from page to page anywhere on the site today. Downloads from the marketplace are extremely slow, while the free items download at megabit speeds. There's hardly a day that goes by that something on this site is broken.

Posting notices in the forums is nearly as effective as trying to bail water out of the Titanic with a teaspoon. No one seems to care anymore.

Sorry for the negative tone, but my patience is at an end. I love Renderosity, and the friends I have made here. I will continue to post in the galleries (assuming I can get past all the other issues), and will continue to ride out the storm - and hope that someday, this site will return to working well, and will be fun rather than just another source of frustration.

I'm done posting in this forum, though. It's just a waste of my time.

Well Rod, I finally got ma arse over here like I said I would.

I too use Comcast. Got no choice really since my town made a deal with the devil and comcast is the only game in town so-to-speak.

But anyway ...

YES. I too notice a big difference here at Rendo than other sites. Though my download speed don't SEEM too bad to me, I haven't really checked them and I normally am doing other things while downloading so they may be slower than I think.

BUT, what I DO notice is when I am looking at promo images of products. I click on the thumbnail and dumb-dee-dumb .... I can hear the jeopardy music in my head and I wait, and wait and WAIT for the promo image to come up and USUALLY ite eventually does. But sometimes it NEVER does. So, I try again and WAIT and WAIT and WAIT and IF I am REALLY lucky it just MIGHT come up. But sometimes not. SO, I try again, and WAIT and WAIT ...

That's pretty much how it goes for me while I am shopping here. Sometimes I just give up on a particular promo image.

But the promo images are just an example. I get that while searching for a product or vendor too at times. Or when I click on a product thumbnail.

I go to DAZ3D and POW! Things come right up! Course that could be because they are not as popular as Rendo too but still ...

If you're gonna have a site like Rendo has here you need to realize that your customer base will grow and your need for growth is going hand-in-hand with that growth. You HAVE to expand with your customer base or you're going to hang yourself.

My speed are fast at RDNA as well.

Sometime when I am waiting for a promo image to come up I will open another tab an zip over to DAZ and see what's new. and then come back and find the image still hasn't loaded or has timed out.

What's with that?

I for one can tell you Rod ... you are not alone. I wonder how many other people are just suffering in silence as I have been up to now.

What we really need to do is just stop buying from Rendo until they get ALL the issues fixed. I hate to say that, because I have several dear friends who are vendors here. But they are being done a dis-service as well with the s.........l..........o...........w response both for downloads and site-wide.

Response today is annoyingly slow all over the site. WTF??

I'll stick around Rendo as long as I can stand it, but my patience is wearing VERY thin.

Yes, looking at promo images is also a painful process for me as well. It has been for a while, but its now gotten to the point that I can't stand it anymore and it has made purchasing here completly unenjoyable.