Yup...........it all sucks. Especially today 6/22. I think I've said all I can. No more forum posts, no more purchases. Even the galleries are extra slow today. Hmmm I think I just heard the toilet handle as it all goes down the tubes.

Uhm since yesterday I am having trouble loading Rendo too. Since Verizon let me out of my internet contract (after verifying my year long complaint about lagging) I'm now on Exede. Everything was fast and going smoothly - until yesterday. Now most of the images in the store don't finish loading, pages are taking forever, or timing out. Usually Facebook is a very slow site for me, but I can cruise through there & every other site just fine. Only Rendo seems to be having an issue for me.

Yes 3-DArena, it is a growing problem here as you can see from the above.

Thanks for posting as the admins here need to realize it isn't just one or two people with this problem.

I LOOOOOOOOOVE your motto BTW. An EXCELLENT quote with a great message. : )

Go to my gallery and see my last post for my final word on this mess. I'm glad everything is fine for some or a few, but it seems for the majority this site is like walking through mud. I could not even test a download speed today, because it would not even make it to the download. I'll be back to check on things once in a while, but I don't have the patience for this anymore.

It really must be my network or something, I am seeing a 5 - 10 second delay when moving from one page to another on inital load (once it's cached you won't see it).  But once the server actually replies everything loads pretty quick.

Well it is a Monday morning here on the east coast of the USA (it's my off-day YAHOOOOOOOO!) and WOOOOOOOW! Rendo is BLAZING fast! Everything is loading like it should. BAM! Pops up in miliseconds.

I will see how things are in the later part of the day.

I am beginning to believe this issue is all about Rendo's need to upgrade in order to handle the traffic.

Well ... I sure am doing MY part with all the money I spend here, LOL! Wish they would put some of that money into improving the bandwith instead of just changing the way the comment windows and other unimportant things look.

Well I'm glad mrestey is doing ok, because nothing has changed here at my end. It took a few tries to even begin a download, which was still at 90 kb/s, and pages are still loading slow. I don't see how it can be a traffic thing. When I joined here beck in 2006-07, online artists would typically be 5000 to 6000 and I rarely noticed any speed of download issues. These days if it goes over 2000 it's rare and regardless of the amount of "artists online" my download speeds do not change nor has the recent issue of pageloads changed either. I fully intend on looking in to see if things change, but I literally cannot upload, download or browse without everything taking an extra 2-5 minutes or timing out. I thnk this is pathetic and frankly irresponsible at this point.

Well, here it is Monday afternoon and sure enough, things HAVE slowed down. But right now at 3:50 ET though things are slower than this morning they are as bad as usual. We''ll see how it goes from here.

I'm doing some research - and I have a question for everyone who is experiencing slow DL speeds...

What ISP are you using? Mike, I know you have Comcast, same as me...

In the rare few minutes I have at work, I just tried a test download from my RMP account. Speeds were between 800KB - 1.2MB. It may be just a quirk - I'll try from home again Tuesday afternoon...

Something odd is afoot.....

Comcast. 

Portland, OR area. 

Quote - Well, here it is Monday afternoon and sure enough, things HAVE slowed down. But right now at 3:50 ET though things are slower than this morning they are as bad as usual. We''ll see how it goes from here.

Actually I meant "are NOT" as bad as usual above. : )

Maybe you are on to something Rod, I too have Comcast, but that does not really explain why everything is fine on other sites. Unless Renderosity is having a conflict with Comcast somewhere along the path, but I'm afraid I lack too much knowledge on these large scale networks. That would be interesting to find there is some protocol that is off between the two. Maybe you'll find something to pass on that the people that are paid to find, did not.

I have comcast as well I'm going to try from home to see what I get.. I can't even hardly say the word COMCAST they are at the root of all my problems here lately with TV, Phone, Internet lol. Ooh don't get me started :):)

Could be something to this.....

"Unless Renderosity is having a conflict with Comcast somewhere along the path" ... this would have nothing to do with Renderosity but how your ISP (in this case Comcast) routes and handles traffic to Renderosity. It could also be with the upstream providers along the way that feed into the data center we use.  Honestly this is the point I was trying to make before - that if it were strictly Renderosity's servers causing the issue - then you would get consistent results for everyone, every ISP, etc.  It's just not the case.  We have submitted a support ticket with our data center for them to investigate this issue since we haven't been able to replicate the problem on our end.  Also, we have a Comcast dedicated business line for alternate internet access in our offices - but we are not experiencing the slow download issues through that either. Ultimately it has to be a routing issue somewhere out there - we've noticed some high latency/lag times in some of the trace routes you guys have posted that we've asked our data center to investigate.  No word yet - we'll keep you posted.  Please let us know if anything changes on your end.  The more places you can test this from the better - to see if you are/are not getting consistent results through different ISPs.

Thanks for the update BW!!  

Please we ask that you be patient as we are trying hard to figure out what the issue is and resolve it. In some cases where it's just some experiencing issues in different ways or different factors involved it's hard to isolate and takes some time to get it all figured out.

Please know that we aren't ignoring the issue that some of you are having at all, we've done several different things that appeared to help some while not helping others, we've investigated several different things, made certain tweaks, etc so we are working toward finding a solution, it's just sometimes not as quick as some of you prefer and we do know it gets frustrating. Please believe if we knew what the issue was it would already be a non issue as we don't want anyone upset. Also not being able to replicate it with any of our staff here makes it even more difficult, we are trying our best though and will continue to hammer at way at different things to get this figured out as soon as we can.

Thank you!

StaceyG & BWsupport THANK YOU for your feedback. I for one appreciate hearing from someone at Rendo and hear that something IS infact being done.

Rod & Art, I wonder how many of the people who responded here at this forum and Art's last post have Comcast.

I DO know that over the years I have had numerous problems with Comcast's service. Once I was so POed I email the district manager directly about the poor service and in less than a half hour I had not one but TWO Comcast service vans in my driveway, LOL.

Having said this, if the problem is not with Renderosity, I still don't know why we would be have these slow-downs ONLY here. Perhaps there is something I am not aware of that would make this so?

Oh I just start off conversations with Comcast in a foul mood cause I know they are going to make me mad.  I think by now they have a big note on my account saying "BEWARE this lady doesn't like us and will tell us so 30 times during a conversation" heehee.  We really have no other options here but Comcast.  Comcast needs some good competition around these parts!! 

Thanks for these two responses. This returns a lot of confidence I was losing. BWSupport's more detailed reply at what is or is not going on helps me to understand that the issue is really being looked at.

Since I am not a networking guru I could not know if you have several streams coming in to Rendo or one. I was imagining several that would eventually route to one and that one of the several was bogging down before it got to "Renderosity Central". But that does not seem to be the case according to BW.

I did a test download and no change, but the site seems to be back to normal as far as browsing and gallery viewing.

Now knowing that you have tickets out to your data center means we all have to wait for others up the chain to respond. Which means more time and waiting, but I understand you cannot be held accountable for others outside of your control.

This is the kind of commuincation I appreciate. It gives me confidence in your efforts and adds to my patience.

For my part, if I have time I can check download speeds at my job. They have Verizon broadband and in the next county over, though only 10 mins from my house. If it's quick from there, maybe I'll have time to do a trace route from there too.

Thanks AD

Thank you Stacey and BW support! It's good to know you are still looking into these issues.

I'm with you, Stacey, RE: Comcast - oh, I could tell you stories.... Suffice it to say when my 2-year contract is up, they will be told what to do with thier "service" in no uncertain terms. I don't know if ATT Uverse is any better, but it certainly couldn't be much worse...

Anyway - I'll be sticking around. Hopefully this will all be worked out soon...

Yes StaceyG. We too are trapped with Comcast. The stupid town I live in made a deal with them to NOT allow any other cable services in town. I thought monopolies were illegal in this country. Hmmmmmmmm.

My only other potential option worth trying was Direct TV and I tried them. They SUCKED worse. You get bad weather and there goes your service. Not only that but they themselves told me I would be better off keeping Comcast for my internet service.

I agree Stacey, Comcast NEEDS some good healthy competition.

" I thought monopolies were illegal in this country." 

Only if you don't have the money to buy off the politicians.....

:-P

Comcast is known to throttle people with heavy data usage (as well as traffic from sites with a lot of data overhead).   They deny this of course, but I have heard more complaints about speed and connection stablity in regards to Comcast then every other ISP mentioned to me combined.

It would not surprise me in the least if Comcast is the issue.   I am on Time Warner and I have no issues personally.  

RodS, you have to sign a contract with Comcast? I don't have to do that (thank goodness) but I'm kind of stuck cause there is no good solution as I don't want Direct TV or the dish or anything for my cable.  

When they were building a new house next door to me the builders kept cutting my cable line cause it was in the most stupid spot EVER and underground of course but Comcast blamed the builders and the builders blamed comcast. It was the most aggravating experience I've ever had. I believe I yelled more during that time than I ever have in my entire life. Comcast got so tired of me that the little comcast guy that came out gave me his personal cell phone number and he would come run me a temporary line even on his off time during the weekend:( I told them they were about to pay my salary cause I had work to do from home and because of them I couldn't complete it, they offered me a $25 credit..Well you know what I told them to do with their $25 credit heehee. That didn't begin to cover the hassle they caused me.

My best friends husband is an employee of comcast so sometimes when I get so upset I call her and say "PUT YOUR HUSBAND ON THE PHONE" when he gets on I proceed to tell him how sucky the company he works for is and what he can tell them when he goes to work ..he just says "uh huh, yeah, okay..appreciate the feedback" laughs and hangs up.. Typical comcast employee!!!

Yeah, Stacey, when I decided to "upgrade" from AT&T DSL, and go with Crapcast's Xfinity Cable/Phone/Internet, I had to agree to 2 years - or pay a $200 'early termination' fee. I have 1 year left on that 'agreement.'

At this point it would almost be worth giving them the 200 bucks and telling them to stick it someplace besides their bank account. I wish Google Fiber was in this area - I'd change over in a heartbeat.

WOW Rod! That's odd. I didn't have to sign a contract with Comcast here in my area either. BUT, I DID have to sign a two year contract with Direct TV. What ever you do Rod, DON'T go with THEM! Every time bad weather comes through you loose your service. They CLAIM you won't but you do.

I didn't have comcast when I was having the issues. I actually missed ithem until recently. I recently switched to Exede Satellite as there are no other options in my area than satellite or 4G.

Well I was with verizon for my hotspot, but it was getting progressively worse. After they upgraded the towers it was impossible.  They finally sent an engineer out (after I threw a fit on their facebook page) & discovered I was not getting good service, that I am between 2 towers and pinging back and forth.  Everytime I did that I was dropped.  

Suffice it to say they let me out of the contract - no penalites. Furthermore they have offered a discount on a tablet for my jetpack.

I'm actually thinking about going to Independence City Hall and pitching a bitch about Comcast being the only option in town.. I really wish we could get Time-Warner.

The Mayor of Independence is a member of our church - don't know if that's an advantage or not, but it couldn't hurt... LOL!

I just downloaded SR1 for PP2014 from SM - 768KB/Sec. Faster than Rendo's downloads, but still not the 1 - 2MB I was getting before... I'm really starting to wonder if it hasn't been either Comcast or some trunk line issue..

@ BW Support...

If I have time this weekend, I'm going to try a few different locations with hotspots - Centerpoint Hospital has excellent Wifi, and we have several Starbucks' and other locations with WiFi. I'll try to do downloads and tracerts from there.

OK. Here it goes! I just made some purchases and the download speeds are a snail's pace! What the hell?!

I did some test downloads at home on my comcast and it was ridiculously slow. If I do the same downloads in the office I have no issues at all...  Comcast is the root of all evil lol...Maybe we should all picket Comcast in our areas!! They drive me batty

I just wanted to update everyone that our data center did report back that there was some fiber work being done by Level 3 in Atlanta that could have caused some issues. This should be complete and the latency issues resolved - so please let us know if you are still having issues.  It may very well be that Comcast is throttling downloads from sites that you download heavily from as well - but this Level 3 issue in Atlanta is the only thing we could pinpoint from the trace routes that you have provided.

Here are some interesting threads about how Comcast throttles individuals that pull high volumes of data:

http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/Massive-Downstream-throttling-by-Comcast-It-s-getting-ridiculous/td-p/975569

http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/Help-I-need-to-have-throttling-stopped/td-p/1257815

http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Customer-Service/Confirmed-with-tech-on-phone-I-am-being-throttled-because-I-am/td-p/1290843 

Thanks for the update BW. But last night and right now, I am attempting to download some purchases and the download speed is the slowest I have EVER experienced here at Rendo. NEVER seen it this slow and I have purchased A CRAPLOAD of stuff here.

I would think that if it were Comcast I would have had download speeds this slow a LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago.

Seems like I am now experiencing what Rod and Art were complaning of.

I am running Mozilla Firefox and don't know how to check what my download speeds actually are but I can tell you it's like dialup all of a sudden.

Usually I only see major slow-downs when trying to view promo images or store pages.

Thanks for the info on Comcast BTW. I will take a look. I think my year is up soon and they will be raising my rates as they do every year and I think I will use this as leverage.

Quote - I didn't have comcast when I was having the issues. I actually missed ithem until recently. I recently switched to Exede Satellite as there are no other options in my area than satellite or 4G.

Using satellite can cause some odd behaviour at times when doing anything on the web.  Various weather conditions can impact network speed, as well as anything blocking the dish (or if the dishes angle changes at all). Satellite in general works much differently then DSL or Cable, and is impacted accordlingly.

Comcast, can throtte data from specfic hostnames, and have been accused of doing so in relation to Netlfix in the past.  I am not sure how much bandwidth you are using per month, but there have been stories of downloads getting progressivly slower the further over the 'cap' you are.

In general, in the past 10+ years of helping people whom have Comcast, I have in 90% of cases found the issue to be either with Comcast equipment, or it's network.  There is a reason it wins bad customer service awards.

I have noticed that a few channels I don't watch often suffer pixelation and the image stutters from time-to-time. Last time I had this there was a problem out on the pole.

I think I'd better call them.

I just downloaded a purchase I just made... Download speeds hovered around 100KB/sec. My DSL was faster than this. When navigating the site, I had no problems - response was good. It's just downloading items from the marketplace.

I am now gathering as much information as possible - it's looking more and more like Crapcast is the culprit.

I have already emailed the tech supervisor for this area - TWO days ago. No response. I will be filing complaints with the Missouri Attorney General's Office, and the BBB - and as many other agencies as I can find. I've had nothing but problems and pathetic customer service from Crapcast.

I urge everyone who is having these issues with Crapcast to do the same. If it's a case of CC throttling Renderosity's bandwidth, perhaps Renderosity can use its leverage as a business as well since I'm sure it's having a negative effect on sales.

The strange thing for me Rod is that normally I notice a really slow download speed when it comes to store pages and promo images but not so much when downloading purchases.

Tonight it is the complete opposite. The store pages and promo images are loading really fast but my purchases from last night (yeah still trying to download them) are downloading at the type of speeds I used to get with dialup. I don't get it.

Oh ... and I pay $20 extra per month for the higher speed modem and service!

I'm going to try some downloads from WiFi hotspots this weekend just to see what kind of DL speeds I get.

Yeah, Mike, they just raised my rate by $20/month. I'm gathering as much evidence as I can to use as leverage. AT&T Uverse is available here - at least a little competiton for Crapcast.

Right now I am downloading two files.

1 File 35.7MB = 16 mins left

1 File 7.9MB = 2 mins left

Thanks for the update, but.....

Still the same here. No faster. Averaging 80 kb/s. If it's Comcast I don't know why every other website I get DL speeds up to 2 mb/s where available. Smith Micro is a little slow at 600-700 kb/s, but generally speaking all sites where I would download, DAZ and C3D, are all normal.

Browsing this site is now fine. I'm glad for that. I can view images normally again and not have to refresh all the time. Downloading from the freebies site is lightining quick, but when I try to download from my account...80 kb/s

I confess ignorance, again, on how signal routing works over countryside networks, but I don't understand how it must be Comcast if everything else works fine and I'm still using Comcast for all that too. Believe me, I'm not defending Comcast, I could list issues too, but it doesn't seem consistent. Unless it's a Comcast "hub" under contstruction as BWsupport says and that's the only way, from here, into Renderosity and my Renderosity account downloads.

A question I have is; how is it different browsing a site compared to downloading. The obvious is there, they are two different interacions, a download obviously can take longer to stream than an image to upload, but if it's all to the same site, the connection I would think be the same. But, I don't know. The most perplexing is it seems some people have no problems and some do.  Unless some don't notice the speed change or care. So I don't know.

I still enjoy everyone's art here, so I'll still be watching and participating. As long as navigating the site is normal I'm glad to absorb and share the art.

I wish ITsupport a lot of luck in figuring this out and appreciate the updates as things occur.

Thanks, AD

Generally...

Loading an image on a webpage is done over HTTP protocal.  Downloading an item is often(but not always) done over FTP Protocal, and often has a higher error correction rate to avoid corrupted files.

HTTP runs (normally) on TCP/IP port 80, where FTP (normally) runs on TCP/IP port 21 (Control) and Port 20 (Transfer).

Jeeze......

16 min for 33MB.. That's painful...

Thanks Fenier for helping to clear that up a little. So I am guessing that even though I'm routed to Rendo with one connection, the loading of pages can happen quick because it is Hyper Text and downloads use up more bandwidth as a file transfer. I'm still astonished at the slowness. To go from 800 kb/s or greater down to 80 kb/s seems very extreme. So I have to conclude that the freebies section at Rendo is not on the same server or whatever, because downloads from there are very fast @ 2mb/s. So...???

We'll see.

Free stuff items are hosted on an Amazon S3 cloud server, outside of the network that hosts everything else. Amazon S3 is distributed on the east and west coast - so depending upon where you are located, you could be routed to either location.  In addition, I imagine it would be harder for Comcast to throttle downloads through the variety of Amazon services.  Unless Comcast is getting a kickback from Amazon like they do Netflix not to throttle traffic from their site.  I won't get into the ethics of that.

http://beta.fool.com/jgmoorejr/2013/04/18/netflix-takes-a-bow/31704/

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/netflix-partner-says-comcast-toll-threatens-online-video-delivery/?_r=0

Strifex, that's the kind of snail's pace I was getting the last two nights as well. I don't recall EVER seeing anything download that slow since I had dialup!

I see you have Comcast as well. I am in New England. If you have no objection, what part of the country are you in? Of course, if you do not feel comfortable saying I completely understand. ; )

OK - I pitched a b##ch to our local Comcast tech, got this reply today:

"I found out that there was a brief problem in your node that has been resolved if you are still experiencing problems let me know and I will dispatch a tech out and we can take a look and see if there is something else going on. Thanks"

I just downloaded 2 files (119MB and 97MB) a friend sent me through Mediafire. After clicking throuh all of MF's irritating pop-ups, my DL speeds were 2 - 3 MB/sec. (!)

I'm gonna try a DL from my RMP account...

Essentially the same.... Download speeds vary from 120 - 80 KB/sec. from the Rendo MP. Perhaps there is an issue in whatever "node" Renderosity happens to be in. Very perplexing..

As Art said, I wish BWsupport all the best in figuring this out - it's got me scratching my head, that's for sure.. Could the marketplace goodies possibly be put on an Amazon server in the future?

Mike, I think Strifex mentioned he was near Portland, Or.

Thanks Fenier for your input - you clearly have more expertise than I do in these matters! :-D

No problem, I work as a web developer for a major company and we are always discussing transfer speed, page loading, etc etc.

Fun fact, studies have indicated as low as a 500 ms (half a second) delay in loading can prompt abandonedment.