Is anyone else experiencing extremely slow download speeds when downloading files (as in when you purchase something in the MP, then download it to your computer)?

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

I ran the speed test - along with Comcast's speed test - both show good download speeds, but I wonder sometimes just how accurate these applications really are...

 

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...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

... And here's Comcast's speed test...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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....

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

Tina Kaylor

Community Manager

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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. 

Here you go.

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

Thanks,

Rod

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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. 

I am presently working 3rd shift, so I was unable to try it this morning.

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Here is the tracert to RDNA

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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

And finally, here is my download screen of a product I just downloaded. As you can see, my download speed is still well below DSL, and only marginally better than dial-up.

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

Tried again today - no significant improvement...

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..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Here's today's tracert - much the same as the last two...

Hope this helps.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

OK - this is interesting..... I tried some DLs from the freestuff area (looks great, BTW) and the download speeds are lightning fast. I had to do 3 downloads to get a screen-cap! This shows a DL speed of over 2MB!

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Here's the tracert and when I went to free downloads, they were super fast at 2mb/s. I've noticed that since the tweaks of last night, the speed has increased to about 300kb/s, but not 2mb/s.

 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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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 reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

 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

Tina Kaylor

Community Manager

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!

Anyone else see a pattern here - or is it just me?

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Test download - a little better, but nowhere near what it used to be.

Thanks for trying...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

No go for me too. As Rod said, I'm glad someone is looking into this and you are now communicating that. That, for me, is a good start in the right direction. Here is my trace route and as you can see it is quite similar to Rod's. So, Rod, it is not you!

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 reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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. 

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.

3-D Arena | Instagram | Facebook

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo

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.....

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

3-D Arena | Instagram | Facebook

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo

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..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

@ 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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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...

 

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

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.

 

Personally I am finding it hard to believe this issue is all because of Comcast. Yes, they suck but I have downloaded HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE amounts of content from Renderosity over the last couple of years and this month is not a month with my heaviest purchases. I have had MANY months where I have purchased more content than THIS month and I have NEVER seen it take 6 minutes to download a 37MB file. NEVER!

AND this is the ONLY site I am having this issue with.

Yes, I said in an earlier post to this forum topic that I don't usually sit and watch my downloads and that's true but even so I have NEVER gone to check site mail or something and come back to check on my downloads and found the meter has bearly moved!

Plus, I can download just as fast as ever from DAZ3D or RDNA or Mec4D!

No. I don't think this is all Comcast - UNLESS - they just started something new. But I find this hard to believe also since people have complaining about Comcast "throttling" for a LONG time.

I believe mrestey is right. I echo all his observations.

Me too....

Just downloaded 3 products from RMP - took over a half hour, "speeds" ranged from 170 - 50 KB/sec. The DL might start around 170KB, but would rapidly fall, sometimes as slow as 50KB/sec.

Like Mike, I've downloaded a LOT of products from RMP over the 3 years I've been a member here. Everything was fine - up until around a month ago. The slow downloads have been consistant since then.

Something has changed - somewhere. I don't think it's entirely a Comcast issue, either - although It wouldn't surprise me if they were a contributing factor. What changed a month ago??

Hope BWsupport is looking at this time frame. Maybe there's a clue?

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

I am considering NOT renewing my Prime membership AND cutting my spending here.

Me too.....

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Already done. I cleared out my wishlist too. I'll use my June RenderRewards and that's it.

OK. So sweet Petra (P3Design) just released a free upgrade makeup texture pack for the Zebra. It is 3.8 Meg in size. It took 1 second to download.

Based on this the 37Meg file I downloaded from my purchased items SHOULD have taken about 9 seconds.

So, as Rod stated earlier, if this slowness is because of Comcast's "thottling", why can we download freebies so much faster than PURCHASED items?

I mean REALLY, does Comcast KNOW or even CARE whether what we are downloading was purchased or was free? I DON'T THINK SO.

Much as I despise Comcast, this is NOT a Comcast issue. Freebies can be downloaded at 1 - 2 MB/sec. The best I can get for purchased - that's PURCHASED - items is 50 - 120 KB/sec?? I can download a 119MB file from Mediafire @ 3MB/sec. I can download from any other CG website at 1 - 3 MB/sec. Only at Rendo do I get below-DSL download non-speeds.

 BW Support stated that the free items are hosted on Amazon's servers. I'm no networking expert by any means, but this tells me that the marketplace items are stored on and/or served from a server....somewhere else. In Nashville? Who knows.. But somewhere between that server (or servers), and customers located nationwide, there is a bottleneck.

All I know is this has been going on for well over a month. The issue is not limited to a few people. It is not confined to one geographic area. Strifex is in the Pacific NW. Art and Mike are in New England. I am in the midwest.

I really hope the folks at Renderosity / Bondware are still investigating / working on the problem. BW Support and Stacey asked us to be patient. For myself, I am trying, but my patience has limits.

I would like to renew my Prime Membership when it becomes due, but that will depend a great deal on what progress (if any) is made on this issue.

 

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Quote - OK. So sweet Petra (P3Design) just released a free upgrade makeup texture pack for the Zebra. It is 3.8 Meg in size. It took 1 second to download.

Based on this the 37Meg file I downloaded from my purchased items SHOULD have taken about 9 seconds.

So, as Rod stated earlier, if this slowness is because of Comcast's "thottling", why can we download freebies so much faster than PURCHASED items?

I mean REALLY, does Comcast KNOW or even CARE whether what we are downloading was purchased or was free? I DON'T THINK SO.

LOL. I MEANT to say Petra released a free upgrade makeup texture pack for the fantasy zebra textures for her new Alicia character. Gotta proof read my posts a bit better I guess.

Anyway ... I think I'm with you Rod. Much will depend whether or not we get any resolution to this issue I think. Shopping here has become a royal pain in the butt.

Are the techs still even working on this or what? Do they have any new information? Would be nice to hear something, eh?

I think this is what gets under a lot of peoples' skin.... The admins or BWSupport will post something, tell us to be patient, then you won't see anything from them for a week or two. Meanwhile, the issue(s) persist with no change.

It does make you wonder...

I have a buttload of stuff in my wish list - like Art, I think I'm just going to clear it out and forget it.

Rendo has a lot of cool stuff in the MP, but it's become such a pain to download it...

I guess all we can do is just sit back, and see what happens - and spend our money elsewhere...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Quote - I think this is what gets under a lot of peoples' skin.... The admins or BWSupport will post something, tell us to be patient, then you won't see anything from them for a week or two. Meanwhile, the issue(s) persist with no change.

I agree Rod, communication is as big an issue as the issue itself. We get a little communication and I'm "Oh, cool, they ARE listening and going to clear this up anyday." A week later.....nothing. No fixes, no whispers. Granted, I don't need to hear everyday that they still haven't found the problem, but after a month of this, I would think support at a commercial site with something to sell would want to fix a problem that is keeping them from selling.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not really saving money, because there's lots of stuff at RDNA and even Content Paradise. And back at Cornucopia 3D I just found some cool plants. I guess it's time for me to spread the love around to other sites anyway.

Yeah, I really need to bulk up my content for Vue as well.... I need to get back into playing with that application. And I think I need Alice five as well... :-)

I just cleared out my wish list – don't see any reason to keep all that stuff in there at the moment.

 Maybe someday they'll get this cleared up, but I'm not holding my breath...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Tried to look at a new product by Silver tonight. Took over 20 seconds to load each preview image. Instead of viewing all five, I gave up after the third and came here to post my complaint. 

Meanwhile the rest of the internet is blazing fast for me like usual. 

Renderosity, not only are you annoying your clients with this continued problem, but your also costing your vendors sales and denying them revenue from said sales. This isnt just a problem that affects your buyers, but your sellers as well. 

I just downloaded a 46.8 MB file from RDNA and it took about 24 seconds.

Why did a 37 MB file from Renderosity take 6 MINUTES?!

I have found that a number of the vendors who sell here also sell at RDNA. I am going to be looking there more from now on.

Me too....

Like Art said - time to spread the love around...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Quote - > Quote - I think this is what gets under a lot of peoples' skin.... The admins or BWSupport will post something, tell us to be patient, then you won't see anything from them for a week or two. Meanwhile, the issue(s) persist with no change.

I agree Rod, communication is as big an issue as the issue itself. We get a little communication and I'm "Oh, cool, they ARE listening and going to clear this up anyday." A week later.....nothing. No fixes, no whispers. Granted, I don't need to hear everyday that they still haven't found the problem, but after a month of this, I would think support at a commercial site with something to sell would want to fix a problem that is keeping them from selling.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not really saving money, because there's lots of stuff at RDNA and even Content Paradise. And back at Cornucopia 3D I just found some cool plants. I guess it's time for me to spread the love around to other sites anyway.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... I never got a notice of this post or Rod's after this. I wonder why?

I just downloaded 3 items from the RMP. I started downloading at 7:20 PM. It is now 7:54PM, and the items have finally finished downloading.

The JPG I have posted tells the story. The non-speed shown is about what I averaged. Speeds ranged from a low of around 65KB to a blazing 80KB/sec. This is only slightly better than dial-up.

My patience is at an end. This has been going on for well over a month with no apparent resolution is sight, and minimal communications from anyone at Rendo.

When it looked like they could push the blame off on Comcast, they became very invloved for a couple days - now it's back to deafening silence once again, and still no resolution to the issue.

I am done.

I will not be renewing my Prime membership, and my purchases here will cease, or be VERY minimal at best. In 2012, my purchases here totalled over $1800.00.

I am very sorry for my friends who are vendors here, because this issue is affecting them as well.

I may consider reinstating my Prime membership if and when this issue is ever resolved. At this moment I have zero confidence in that ever happening.

I am also done posting in this forum. It's just a waste of my time.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

I second that Rod.

July 4th 2013, 10:00 AM

I think I am alone here. Is there anyone out there?

Just in case the admins and/or any kind of tech support just MIGHT still be monitoring these posts I will leave a little information:

I decided that while my Prime membership is still active, I may as well take advantage of it and I used the current coupon. After making my purchases, I got another cup of coffee and got settled in for the LONG wait.

But SUDDENLY ... what's this?! I CAN"T BELIEVE MY EYES! My files are downloading nearly as fast as ever! I'm getting somewhere around 22 to 30 Mbps - FROM THE PURCHASED ITEMS?

Be still my heart!

What happened?

Could it be because this is a holiday and it is morning here on the east coast? I think it likely as we have heard nothing from Rendo's tech support in a long time. I hope they are still there. I hope that what ever beast is out there destroying the Rendo bandwidth didn't get them and drag them off to cyber-hell.

As for Rod and Art ... well ... only time will tell if they are still there.

• DUN - DUN - DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN*

TO BE CONTINUED

Tried a re-download of yesterday's purchase.

120 KB/sec

Essentially no change here...

goes back to silent mode

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

July 5th, 2013 11:00 AM

I see at least Rod is still there.

I think the tech support staff got taken to cyber-hell. Haven't heard a thing from them in a LOOOOOOOOONG time. If they are still among the living, they apparently have given up monitoring this forum - perhaps they've simply given up all together.

Well ... I just tried downloading a 58 MB file that took 9 seconds yesterday and Firefox was reporting that it would take 3 minutes. I waited for about 30 seconds and the indicator bar wasn't even moving so I gave up.

3DArena suggested clearing cache and such. I did. No change. The same 58 mb file is still not downloading worth a damned.

No. It all still sucks. I used my Render Rewards and the latest, and my last, Prime coupon to get Dinoraul's new T-Rex with additional textures. It took about 20mins or so for a total of about 30mb. In the space of a sit com, I downloaded 2 products. Ridiculous. There is nothing more I can say here. I'll be checking out the galleries, but it is unlikely I'll be buying much.

Now, HERE is something interesting:

I've been chatting with 3DArena who WAS having this slowness problem too for a few days. She said it cleared up after a couple of days and has been fine since.

BUT ... I told her that the 58 mb file I have been having trouble downloading was the first file of her Rionach character. So, she gave a link to the Rionach file in "the locker". Not sure what "the locker" is but I guess it is a more direct link to product or something like that.

And GUESS WHAT ... that same file that Firefox was telling me would take 3 minutes but wasn't moving and IE told me would take 5 minutes and was downloading at 150 KBS downloaded from the locker in 30 seconds!

So, she speculates that this is an indicator that the STORE here has a problem.

I believe she is correct.

IF there are any techs following this, please check this out.

It's the file locker.  Prime members get space on it with their membership others can purchase it.  I'm not sure why it would work from there.  But when we look at how the freestuff is downloading ok & the file locker is also better that says it's not the whole site but rather something specific to how the files are being sent via the store.

It's also only a few people so as you know I'm not fully ruling out an ISP issue, not after my experience with facebook and Verizon that affected things only for 1 area of Facebook.  It could be if you all have the same isp that there is a stop, block or throttle of some kind in place for that type of file call.  They'll never tell you of course.

The alternate option is if any of the people having a problem can log in to the site from elsewhere and try.  I was able to prove the issue we were having on FB was due to Verizon when I couldn't do it with my laptop at home but I could go to McDonald's with my laptop and switch identities there no problem.  Others with the issue did that as well. Same laptop, same account, different ISP.  Once I pointed that out to Verizon publicly the issues were "mysteriously" cleared up in a couple hours.

3-D Arena | Instagram | Facebook

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo

I like that idea Shawn. I think I'll do that. I know McDonald's uses a different ISP. I think it's Verizon, not sure.

Rod was talking about trying that this past weekend.

Hmmmm............

I didn't get a chance to try it last weekend, but I'll see if I can try it this weekend... I'll try it from Centerpoint Medical Center - they have a really good Wifi hotspot. I'll let you know what happens..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

OK. So I took the wife out to dinner at McDonalds - yeah, I'm a big spender, LOL.

I used their wifi. Their ISP is AT&T. To keep things consistant I attempted to download the exact same file as I have been experimenting with thus far. Guess what? NO CHANGE!

I was getting the exact same download speed on their ISP as on Comcast from my account downloads.

So, what do we have so far? Lets see:

1: I have tried 3 different browsers, having cleared my cache and history and cookies and all that crap. NO CHANGE. The same 150 kbps download speeds

2: I downloaded yesterday morning - July 4th - and my download speeds were anywhere from 22 to 30 Mbps.

3: Today at around 11 AM I tried and things were back to a snail's pace.

4: 3DArena sent me a download link to the same file which she had placed into her locker for me and it download from there in 30 seconds whereas from my purchased items it takes anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes to download.

5: I just tried downloading the same file from my Rendo account using a totally different ISP and it was just as slow as Comcast.

Now, to be fair, I should try more ISPs but I don't have access to more at this time. I will have to find out who else around here has free open wifi.

BUT, to ME everything is looking more like an issue with Rendo's server not being able to keep up with the demand.

McDonald's??

See, it's no wonder G4 and Arawen hang out with me...... :-D

I'm going to be getting out tomorrow to do a bit of photography - I'll take my laptop, and try as many different hotspots as possible.. In fairness to Rendo, and to eliminate as many variables as possible.

I'm not much of a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager the downloads won't be much different. We'll see.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Don't think that just because only a few people are posting their problems here that it isn't widespread. Not everyone will come here and complain even when they've been encouraged to do so.

I don't have a complaint with RMP downloads because I haven't tried it lately. It is true that downloads from the Freebies section are very fast. HOWEVER, when I go into the RMP and try to look at product pages, it takes anywhere from 25 to 40 seconds for the page to load, and even after it loads, it's still rearranging itself in the Description/Editorial sections, repositioning the stacks of images in there. That does not happen anywhere else on line to me. I am not on Comcast. This is really frustrating when trying to look at anything. It is as was pointed out above a disservice to both your vendors and your buyers.

Maybe you're not going to like this, but I'm going to say it anyway. There seems to be a certain arrogance at work here about "it can't be us" when clearly no other site we go to has these issues. Blame it on the ISP. Making people run comparison tests is bogus. Neither Art or Rod are 'whiners' and neither am I, but we are not being listened to and so we are back again with issues. There also seems to be a certain arrogance about people threatening not to buy or to leave. It's like you don't care and somewhere you're laughing up your sleeve saying "They'll be back." Maybe they will and maybe they won't. However...some buyers are to blame for this (ahem) because they keep buying in spite of their unhappiness and their issues.  

As for e-bots and mail-bots, I'm on Yahoo and they come whenever they feel like it - sometimes right away but mostly much later than they used to come since this all started. They're not going in my spam folder. They're just taking forever to show up both on site or in my mailbox. Yes, the galleries and comments are working much better and thank you for that! Still, these other things are serious issues that need to be dealt with. We're not complaining for 'no reason' or because we like to. We're complaining because this is the ONLY site this happens on - that's why.

Wait!!!! I do have more to say. First; I completely agree with Ray and second, why are we doing all the work here? I really doubt anyone has the time to do someone else's job. I'm all for an assist or a few minutes to check things out, but this is getting really effing ridiculous. People are helping because they care and because they want something to work the way it's supposed to work. I guess the "Webmasters" here are not of that mind.

BTW: I just read about 6 responses to this thread, but was only notified of one.??? And I don't  even know if I'm getting all my ebots anymore. I'm getting some, maybe that many people are no longer posting their work.

There are so many leaks in this ship, I even wonder if it can be salvaged. My main gallery page still looks like sh*t when I pull it up in IE, so I've taken down links to that page in case anyone using IE, which is alot, was going to take a look.  The most recent post is larger than the window and the ads bar on the right covers everything up. It looks like a student practice page rather than a professional website.

Welcome to the party, Ray!

Actually, I was going to suggest - since Mike, Art, and myself are doing all the research, troubleshooting, and legwork, a years' Prime membership for each of us might be......Appropriate.

Assuming, of course that this issue is eventually cleared up... But then, I'm a hopeless optimist - I just bought a Powerball ticket.. The way I see it, the odds are pretty close to the same - me winning the Powerball, and Rendo paying any attention to us.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

AWESOME idea Rod. But, sadly I believe you are correct. It seems Rendo is not listening.

My father used to accuse me of being 'a Pollyanna' when I was young. Heh...I'm an optimist too about a lot of things - until they prove not being worth my optimism.

Maybe when and if the vendors start complaining they'll listen. Hate to say that but, I think really it boils down to that.

You can threaten to spank a child all you want, but if you never do, they'll just keep doing what they were doing and ignoring you. It's kind of the same principle - ya know?

Quote -
Making people run comparison tests is bogus.

Actually I suggested that, I am not a Rendo employee, I just know that after I cleared my cache my speeds at Rendo improved. I also had a recent experience where I was able to show one way or the other if an issue was related to isp's that resulted in things getting fixed. That isn't jumping through hoops if one is going to be in an area with an alternate isp it's worth looking into. I think that was resolved.

I also find the product pages load slower, not as slowly as they did a short time ago, but slower than usual.

The newsletters have been odd for awhile like most sites they go out in batches so it's possible the timing has shifted based on new members or something.

To move on to address adorety's comment here"

Quote - BTW: I just read about 6 responses to this thread, but was only notified of one.??? And I don't even know if I'm getting all my ebots anymore. I'm getting some, maybe that many people are no longer posting their work.

That is actually normal and has been for as long as I can remember & I've been here 12 years. It always sends out 1 email for a new response, you won't get another one until you visit the forum and read it again, that's to prevent blowing up your email and most forums have that option nowadays, but it has been like that as long as I've been a member.

Other than that - carry on.

3-D Arena | Instagram | Facebook

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo

Just to clear some things up (note I don't work here).

They said that the freebies are hosted by Amazon's EC2 servers, so that by default makes it a distrubuted network.  You are likely getting better speeds because in all honesty the number of 'hops' the route between you and the EC2 server you are near is likely to be less then the number of 'hops' between you and whereever Renderosity's store is located.

The internet as a whole is very dependable, however the given route between any two points is much less so.   It is fairly common to test different points (in this case ISPs) to determine exactly where the issue lays. Often times however, the issue is in fact, Comcast.

This is clearly a networking problem, and as such switching browsers isn't apt to have any effect in the speed the server sends data.  Pulling the following product page at random:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/calendar-girl/99740/

The client is making 166 requests, at a total of 3.2 megs to render that page.  In this case the sheer number of requets is really hampering the page load, as different clients make different amounts of HTTP requests at the same time.

Running Page Speed on that page, generates a score of 71/100, however flags server response time as an issue to look into.   In short, it took the server almost half a second to start return the HTML to my client to even begin the parsing, then another 300 ms to return the file in full to me. (So by the time the HTML has been returned, 3/4ths of a second have passed).

This really points to the webserver being slow or under load.  I don't know the internal configuring of Renderosity's network, but I would personally in this situation really be looking at the server load, the load balancer (Because I am assuming there is more than one webserver), and the Firewall configuration.

If internally they are not seeing issues, I'd have to really question if they are accessing the site 'externally' from an internal location or not.  If interally they are taking a different route avoiding the Firewall's external config, for example, they are very apt to get different results.

Some fun details the support staff may like:

On Roadrunner in the North East, pinging renderosity.com never returns a value, the server always times out.  I get the same results when trying to ping the domain from network-tools.com

Running Trace Route from multiple points I always start getting time outs once I enter the following domain structure:

*.nd1.nas.peak10.net 

So whatever the next hop from there is, is likely to be part of your problem.

 

 

 

 

Also, for anyone really interested in this subject, Google has a awesome course about working with their dev tools in Chrome to figure out and fix issues related to webpages.

http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/

Very cool! Thanks for the information and link! Most fascinating.

Sheesh - just what I need..... Something else to keep me up late at night.... LOL

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Quote - There are so many leaks in this ship, I even wonder if it can be salvaged. My main gallery page still looks like sh*t when I pull it up in IE, so I've taken down links to that page in case anyone using IE, which is alot, was going to take a look.  The most recent post is larger than the window and the ads bar on the right covers everything up. It looks like a student practice page rather than a professional website.

The responsive layout does not work properly. 

For example, the right side bar resizes, but does not resize the images so they get cut off. Or Bleed out side of the bar, depending on section.

Additionally, while on a tablet in landscape mode, the promo banner in the header isn't resized so bleeds out of the container.

All of that can be fixed, but it's clearly not 'stepping down' properly.   My Smartphone for example does not get a mobile layout.   You would think, making the design reponsive, that'd be one of the first things they'd check.

You know.... there's an old saying.....

If you give a chimpanzee a typewriter and enough time, paper, and bananas, he'll write a novel.

Apparently it works the same way for website design in some quarters....

:-P

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Will fixing the issues with Chrome fix the issues with IE, FF and Safari? Let's not pretend there's only one browser in use here. Just because one or some people prefer it doesn't mean we all do.

I live in a large metropolitan city, within the city limits. My ISP is our local phone company, not Comcast. I have absolutely no issues with any other site's pages loading. They load more or less instantaneously when I click on them. I do in fact know of someone who lives in a rather remote area and uses HughsNet and has no problems at all with downloading, so I find it hard to believe it's the ISPs that are the issue here. 

It depends on the issue.

Chrome DevTools are a toolkit which helps troubleshoot issues, can can clear up issues in other clients, assuming they are having the same issues.  Firefox and IE have their own dev tools (but they don't offer spiffy interactive video courses for them).

Currently, Chrome uses Webkit (soon to be Blink), Firefox uses Gecko, IE uses Trident, and Safari uses Webkit.   Each of these different rendering engines may process CSS slightly different.

In regards to page loading, a lot of what Chrome identifies will fix the issue across clients.  That said some bugs are client specfic, such as older editions of IE incorrectly rendering the margins of elements (and this is why developers often charge more for supporting IE 6 and IE 7).  Those would in some cases have to be fixed on a client by client basis.  You can get around a lot of that however by using standards compliant markup.

It's pretty clear from the Waterfall timeline however, that the server is taking longer then it likely should to process / return requests in regards to loading webpages and their dependancies.

 

Thank you for your answer, Fenier!

Thanks to 3D-Arena for the explanation on the forum notification. That makes a lot of sense, otherwise I would indeed be flooded with many ebots, especially with this particular post.

Thanks to Fenier for adding your expertise to this conversation. It's good to have some clarifications on these issues.

There are so many factors outside of Renderosity that we can't possibly troubleshoot every possibility.  Going forward let's do this - anyone having issues please provide us the following information so we can try to find common denominators:

1.) your ISP

2.) which browser and browser version you are using

3.) router model and software version

4.) modem model

5.) anti-virus/firewall software you are using

6.) your general location

7.) post your trace route results to www.renderosity.com 

 

Thanks.

Fernier - let me address some things in your latest posts. First, we use Amazon S3, not EC2 - pretty big difference there.

Secondly, we have multiple access points that we test internally and externally. Yes we have a direct line that is supplied by a carrier within in our data center, but we also have connectivity through Comcast business that we test on also. Ironically, we have no issues with that line as residential users are having with Comcast.

Personally, I have Charter internet, a Verizon wifi card and AT&T wireless that I'm able to test on from home. I don't share any of the issues from any of these connections that you all are reporting in this forum. But as you pointed out, location and the route from your location to the destination that your ISP takes is a critical difference. Also, the trace route request timeout doesn't necessarily indicate a problem since it is based upon ICMP settings in the firewall. Our direct line (internal connection as you put it) resolves all of those requests just fine. You should be able to ping renderosity.com without any problems.

I'm able to ping from all of my connection options without issue. But when I test ping from dnsreport.com tools it doesn't resolve. Below is a link (only good for 48 hrs) to a trace route I performed with dnsreport.com which shows 2 different routes, from Denver and from Austin. Both resolve completely without any request timeouts just as I am able to do with the 3 options I have access to, which indicates to me that the issues are ISP and/or route specific in some way.

http://bit.ly/17Zwkd3

Hi,

I can execute ping on the renderosity.com, but it times out, thus reporting 100% packet loss. This is from my home computer.  So either the domain is configured to reject Ping (Firewall setting?) or the server is taking so long to reply the request times out before that happens.  Google returns a ping average of 40ms.

My system is:

• In Maine
• Connected to Time Warner
• Via a Webstar DCP200 Modem
• Via  Netgear WNR2000 Router with a Wired Ethernet connection.
• To a Box Running Windows 7 with MS AV, that has a 3.6 GHZ Quad core processor and 8 Gigs of DD3 RAM on Chrome 27.

Traceroutes time out once they enter the peak10.net domain (I assume Firewall configuration).

On the site you have two AJAX requests that fire every 20 seconds.

They are, on average, reporting:

• DNS Lookup 0 ms
• Connecting to Server 70ms
• Sending 0ms
• Waiting 373ms
• Recieving 3ms

Your homepage, is consistantly taking 700 to 900ms on my setup to fully recieve the HTML response, because the server is waiting a full half a second to start transmitting.

Something between your provider and your network is clearly adding some overhead, or the network is under load and the requests are queuing up.

 

How long have you had that particular page open? We changed those requests from 20 to 120 seconds about 2 weeks ago? We don't have any load problems at this time.  In fact we made changes that reduced the only load issues we were experiencing about 10-12 days ago. There's obviously going to be a little time involved in the load balancer figuring out the most accessible machine to hand the request to - but in my own testing I'm only seeing minimal differences between the time it takes Renderosity vs RuntimeDNA, Google, etc. when comparing similar pages - by similar I mean pages with lots of images to other site pages with lots of images or simple pages with minimal content to the same.

I would like to know why, with all the other sites out there only this one will no longer provides the dowmload speeds I used to get. It used to be fine.

I have tried a number of browsers as mentioned before, and two diffent ISPs.

EVERYTHING loads slow here - store pages, images - but nowhere else. Not DAZ, not RDNA, not Content Paradise, NOWHERE.

Where are the "lockers"? What server? I downloaded from there very quickly.

It has been shown that ISPs don't seem to make a difference. Browsers don't seem to make a difference.

I use the same anti-virus I have used for years. The same modem I've been using. The same everything. If I had made a change to things I could see it.

Nothing has change except Renderosity. The more Renderosity changes, the worse things get.

This problem spans location, ISPs, ant-viruses, modems ect.

Also, why are download speeds typically faster in the AM, and on holidays here in the east but get progressively slower as the day progresses if it has to do with browsers, ISPs, antiviruses ect.?

Renderosity's server cannot keep up.

I flushed the cache and am now seeing the 120second delay between calls.

I do agree that the load balancer will have some overhead. 

However, with cache turned off I have results of pulling in the homepage as high as the following:

• DNS Lookup 1ms
• Connecting 75ms
• Sending 0ms
• Waiting 1.18seconds
• Recieving 267ms

It's not 100% consistent mind you, but there really seems to be a delay on the server reply.

Page Speed flagged these requests are taking a long time when I ran the test:

• http://www.renderosity.com/ (437 milliseconds)
• http://www.renderosity.com/event_lookup.php?... (268 milliseconds)
• http://www.renderosity.com/.../header_menu.js?... (440 milliseconds)
• http://www.renderosity.com/.../jquery_lookup.php?... (397 milliseconds)
• http://www.renderosity.com/.../Blue.css (381 milliseconds)

So, I'm at work and finally had a few minutes to check things out here. I'm skipping lunch.

At work we have Verizon Fios and I'm sitting at an old Dell Optiplex GX520 Celeron 2.66ghz and 500mb ram running win XP Professional 2002. I did say it was old. I went to my account and low and behold a 45 mb file downloaded in about 30 seconds. But...I did a trace route and got the same kind of response as my computer at home. I suppose I can go to work to download my products, but that seems to defeat the purpose. This does make me wonder about my home firewall and Norton. Norton is often a pain in the ass, especially with DAZ, where it will dump a file saying it is not safe even though the whole file downloaded. I completely disable Norton when I download from DAZ now and maybe I'll try this with Rendo. Attached is the trace route from the above mentioned setup. I don't know what kind of modem it is, but I assume it is one you get when you sign up with them.

Sorry, here's the trace route, I saved it as a bmp first. Here's the jpeg

I just got home from running a little test... I downloaded the same 43MB file I've been testing with using the public WiFi at Centerpoint Medical Center here in Independence. The download speed averaged about 600KB/sec - still not the 1 - 2 MB I used to get, but much better than the 113KB I got from home when I tried a couple moments ago.

Very baffling... While I agree with BWSupport that there are countless variables out there, something changed a little over a month ago. I do find it odd that I can download @ anywhere from 1 - 3 MB/sec from anywhere else, but not at Renderosity. Perhaps something changed in or around Renderosity/Bondware's locale? Very curious...

The info you requested..

 

1.) your ISP: Comcast

2.) which browser and browser version you are using: IE 10, Firefox, Chrome - on 3 different systems..

3.) router model and software version: Comcast Xfinity, Arris TG862 (Firmware unknown - pushed to router/gateway automatically by Comcast

4.) modem model: N/A

5.) anti-virus/firewall software you are using: AVG Anitvirus/Firewall on System 1, Norton Antivirus/Friewall (provided as part of my Xfinity service from Comcast) on other systems.

6.) your general location: Kansas City, Missouri area.

7.) post your trace route results to www.renderosity.com..... coming soon

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, BW Support. I know it's a lot of troubleshooting, and a very complex issue. I think I speak for many of us when I say we feel better knowing you're still investigating the issues.

 

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Here's the latest Trace route..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

So.... Let me display my abundance of ignorance here, and ask if anyone knows what/where/why the "v11.nd2.nas.peak10.net" represents? In both Art's and my trace routes, it seems like all the timeouts start here... I know BW Support says the timeouts don't neccesarily make a difference, but still.... Seems like a bottleneck to me..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Did a Google search for "peak10" - they do have a facility in Nashville, which is Rendo's area. I wonder if this could have anything to do with these issues.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

That's my tracert above. I emptied my browser cache and restarted my machine before I did this, so there was nothing else there.

 

1.) your ISP: Century Link (was Qwest)

2.) which browser and browser version you are using: IE 10

3.) router model and software version: Router model: don't know on DSL

4.) modem model: Q1000

5.) anti-virus/firewall software you are using: Windows Security Essentials

6.) your general location: Denver, Co.

7.) post your trace route results to www.renderosity.com

I am hitting a similar 'brick wall' that RodS is hitting where my trace starts timing out, except it's v10, not v11.

Why is my tracert not showing? It's in my file locker here and I copied the link.

http://bw-1651cf0d2f737d7adeab84d339dbabd3-rrfilelock.s3.amazonaws.com/ROTrace070613-3_25pm_47864.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0M0V7HYQVC2XCPNWY102&Expires=1373148935&Signature=pQ4x9txbAWoaxqyzRF5oJkQiMic%3D

 

*This is an edit: Now it's showing, but just in case it doesn't again, I'll leave this here.

 

And another thing. I had store credit and I just purchased a product to use it. I thought I hit the 'Apply' button but evidently not (?) So, anyway I went back to apply it to my total and got an error because it had already processed my purchase, because it said my shopping cart was empty. So, my purchase is listed as 'Unpaid' which is okay, because it wasn't paid yet. Then, I went and clicked on it in My Account and went ahead and paid the amount through PP. It is now 20 minutes later. It's still showing as "Unpaid" and I have not received a delivery confirmation. I received my PP statement right away. o.O

 

Additionally, my In Store Credit says one amount on my Account page and more on my Check Out page. Which is it - the one on my Account page or the one on my Check Out page?

It is nearly three hours later and I STILL do not have a link to download my order, and it is STILL showing as unpaid. I've made screen shots and I will upload it if you want. Needless to say, I am NOT happy.

1.) your ISP: Comcast

 

2.) which browser and browser version you are using: Chrome and Firefox

 

4.) modem model: ARRIS TM602G

 

5.) anti-virus/firewall software you are using: Norton (problem persists even when Norton is disabled)

 

6.) your general location: Portland, OR

 

Quote - It is nearly three hours later and I STILL do not have a link to download my order, and it is STILL showing as unpaid. I've made screen shots and I will upload it if you want. Needless to say, I am NOT happy.

 

It is now nearly 2 am MDT - 10 hours later, and my account is still showing my order as unpaid, in spite of the fact that I have a PP receipt that I received at 3:58 pm that says otherwise. I still have not received an email with my download link probably because your system thinks I haven't paid. Maybe I could download it from my Account page, but I would prefer not to as long as your system is showing it as 'Unpaid'. I haven't tried and I'm not going to because I want to be sure it is shown as 'Paid'.

I 'was' going to see if I had slow download speeds too for you. I have to say, this is the slowest download speed ever, because I still don't have what I paid for 10 hours ago on my machine.

Yup. Sunday morning here on the east coast and that same 58 Mb file I have been using as a gage. downloaded from my account downloadable area in 30 seconds as apposed to the usual 6 minutes.

I notice now that I get a slightly better speed early in the day rather than later, yet the amount of people online here is greater now than in the evening. Granted the improved speed is 144 kb/s instead of 90 kb/s, but it is strange. It seems everone's trace route stops at the nas peak 10. Is that a hub that lots of sites meet up at? I guess that would still not explain the variations and the fact that some people do not seem to be affected.

I did try a download with Norton disabled at home, but it did not change anything. ugh

BTW, speaking of Rendo's site not working right ... has anyone else experienced the situation where the up & down arrows for the What's Hot Today bar on the right hand side of the store pages don't always function?

I have. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.

Well, the copy and past didn't work too good. The column is called "What's Hot Today". The up/down arrows sometimes don't function.

That sidebar is overlapping on my My Gallery page. It's not overlapping on my My Artist page or inside my gallery when viewing a particular image. My Up/Down arrows seem to be working. I tend to use the slider bar though. 

**mrestey and **SidheRoseGraphics,

---

****Let me go look into these issues and I will get back with you.

 

Just wanted you to know you are not being ignored.

Tina Kaylor

Community Manager

**mrestey and **SidheRoseGraphics,

Tried to duplicate these issues but didn't have a problem.  I am using Chrome can you tell me which browser you are using so I can try and see if I get this issue with those?

Tina Kaylor

Community Manager

I have the same issue with the 'My Gallery' page. I Have ever since the last round of 'improvements.' No, it doesn't do that with Chrome, but it does with IE - which most people still use. I suspect Mike and Ray are also using IE.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

I am using IE10 as I stated above, Tina. I generally have my window set to 125% zoom because it's easier for me to see things - especially here with the images in galleries. I thought this might be the problem with the sidebar overlap but I set it to 100% and still have the overlap. I did - just now - click on the "Compatibility View" icon in my browser window bar (the 'broken page' icon) and it fixed the overlap on the My Gallery page. So, evidently there is an issue with compatibility with IE10, if not IE9, etc. 

 

I did get my download email for my purchase at 8:30 am this morning - thank you. I just downloaded both files and they downloaded pretty fast - 816-818 kb/sec. I don't know if the download problem has been fixed but that was pretty fast. 

 

 

Oh my I am so happy and we will keep our fingers crossed that the download speed stays this way.

 

Please keep me updated.

Tina Kaylor

Community Manager

OK - I ticked compatability view for Renderosity, and the "My Gallery" page looks fine, now.... Didn't even think of compatability mode 'till Ray mentioned it.... DUH....

I'm gonna try a test download....

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

No change here...... 135 KB/sec tops.... sigh

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Compatibiliy view will only affect the html/css display and have no bearing on downloads.  

As for the "request timeouts" once connections make it into the Peak 10 facility - that is because we have ICMP restricted at the firewall level for security purposes.  It's not an indicator of any sort of issue or bottleneck.  Whatever is happening is occurring somewhere en route to the data center at Peak 10 outside of anything we can directly control.  If the bottleneck were in fact at the Peak 10 level, then everyone would be experiencing the same issues with download speeds.

Well yes, that is understood regarding the page display and the downloads. Two separate issues, thus two separate paragraphs above.

WOW! Looks like a lot happened since my last post. Sorry I'm late to the party.

TinaK, I typically use Mozilla Firefox. I could try some of the others to see if the issue is the same if you wish. I recently downloaded and installed Chrome to see if it made a difference in my download speeds - it didn't.

I just tried my experimental file I have been using to test the downlod speeds and it is as slow as it has been for the last 3 weeks. Well, at least in the later part of the day anyway.

I can generally download with ANY browser @ 22 - 30 Mbps in the morning.

I still say it has to do with how busy your server is.

I'm at work, and I just tried downloading the same 45MB file I've been experimenting with for the last week.

It downloaded at 1.6MB, and took 6 seconds..... WTF??? I'm REALLY scratching my head, now...

I can DL from Rendo at work, and get 1.6MB/sec. But at home, I get 90 - 130 KB/sec. But only at Rendo... I can DL from anywhere else @ 1 - MB/sec.

Looks like there's a lot more at play here than I thought... Most baffling, but it does explain why some folks have no problems with slow DL, and others do.. And why the techs at BW are having difficulty tracking the issue down..

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Quote - I am using IE10 as I stated above, Tina. I generally have my window set to 125% zoom because it's easier for me to see things - especially here with the images in galleries. I thought this might be the problem with the sidebar overlap but I set it to 100% and still have the overlap. I did - just now - click on the "Compatibility View" icon in my browser window bar (the 'broken page' icon) and it fixed the overlap on the My Gallery page. So, evidently there is an issue with compatibility with IE10, if not IE9, etc. 

 

Activating Compat view in IE 10 will typically throw it into IE 7 standards.  If, when in IE 10 you hit f12, you will get a developer menu.  If you look at the 'title' area there is a selection for Document Mode and Browser Mode.  If both Browser and Document Mode list IE 10, and the page layout is broken, then the page (HTML or CSS) does not confirm to IE 10 standards markup and will display with a 'broken' layout.

In short, if you need compat view on to view the site correctly, then the site does not follow current standards in one or more places.  For me, in IE 10 - activating Compt View breaks the homepage badly.

 

 

It says IE10 Compat Mode for the Browser and IE7 for the Document Mode. 

Still no change here. :( 

NOPE! No change here either. My Prime membership is about to expire and I will not be renewing it.

Hey. Finally a change ... The download speeds are actually getting WORSE if you can believe it. I think dialup is faster.

I now get about .1 MB per second here at Renderosity! WOW!

About 20 minutes to download a 21 MB file.

Again ... only here at Renderosity.

What's wierd is I can get halfway decent speeds from Rendo if I download at work, or even at the lobby of the local hospital.... But not at home.

And yet, I can DL from RDNA or YouSendIt at 2 - 3 MB/sec. At home, or away from home.

I was just sitemailing with Art - no change for him, either.

 

I sure don't understand it....

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

I downloaded two texture sets in the last 24 hours and they loaded pretty fast. My ebots and mail bots are still appearing at odd 'spastic' intervals (i.e., whenever) in my Yahoo mailbox. I DID notice that the Accept Friend Requests is fixed now. Thanks for that.

I don't understand it either Rod - especially if nothing's changed on yours, Arts, strifex' and mretseys ISPs after the last big 'fix'...what, almost 6-7 weeks ago now?

I downloaded a 16gb game from Steam today faster than I did my purchases from Renderosity. 

 

:( 

Yes. I wish more of the vendors from here offered the same products at DAZ3D or RDNA. I have fine download speeds from those two places.

I would love to renew my Prime, but what's the use if I'm not going to be downloading from here. Comcast had no answers(big surprise). I've used different browsers...no change. I even have a new modem since all this began...no change. I've reset my own network a few times...no change. I download from other sites at excellent speeds and here...no change. I'm sure IT here tried to look into this, but alas...no change. Can you shut down a website and reboot? Probably not. Oh well.

Why can I download from my account at work and it moves fast, but not from my home computer? No one seems to have a clue. It is too strange. It's not worth it to me to bother with Prime anymore. I don't have time to wait for downloads at 60-90 kb/s. I'm sure I'll have to buy something from here once in awhile, but no more Render Rewards months. Probably for the best. I am starting to save money :)

Well techincally you can reboot, it's just not likely to fix the problem

You restart both the webserver service(s), and the actual machine.

I'm probably not going to renew mine, either. I hate it - Rendo does have tons of really cool stuff in the marketplace - but like Art, I just don't have time for download speeds that are only marginally better than dial-up. The last couple things I bought took almost 45 minutes to download at an average of 75KB/sec.

Yes, I can download at work at 1 - 2 MB/sec - but with my job, I rarely have time to do anything on line, and I shouldn't be doing it at work anyway. I SHOULD be able to do it at home.

All I know is:

1. This issue started nearly 2 months ago, after the latest round of "improvements" to the site.

2. I can download from any other website @ anywhere from 1 - 3 MB/sec. at home or at work, or at a WiFi hotspot.

3. I can download Rendo's free content at 1 - 3 MB/sec. at home or at work, or at a WiFi hotspot. Marketplace purchases do well to break 100 KB/sec. But only at home.

4. This is consistant with 3 different computers, and 3 different browsers. Re-booting computers and/or network/router/modem has no effect on the issue.

5. No one seems to have a clue as to why this is the ONLY website experiencing this issue.

I will purchase here occasionally, but will not renew my Prime membership at this time. If, at some point, this issue gets cleared up, and I am able to consistantly download at the 1 - 3 MB/sec speeds I was able to for 3 years prior to this issue popping up, then, and only then, I will consider reinstating my Prime membership.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Indeed. I am of the same mind. It's practicality and nothing personal, because I would love nothing more than to have business as usual.

Well, as Adorety said, "I'm sure I'll have to buy something from here once in awhile". So, I looked at my Prime purchases from this last season and took note of the fact that my purchases did indeed make it well worth the Prime price. And, between the 50% off price of the Prime membership and the 20% coupon, I decided to go for it after all. BUT, this is only for these two reasons:

1: I have examined my spending here and realized that between what I have been spending and the lack of resolution concerning this download speed issue that is experienced ONLY here I will be spending far less money this year - I have already begun cutting back, and I LIKE IT! I am now FAR more discerning about what I purchase partly because I know the download process will make me pay for my choices.

2: I don't expect I will be spending enough to meeting the Render Rewards minimums anymore which makes the Prime all that much more valuable.

So, if I'm going to have to wait forever for a purchase to download I may as well get it at a good price right?

Hey, you know, Rod brings up a good point AGAIN! "3. I can download Rendo's free content at 1 - 3 MB/sec". WHY?

I never DID get a response to my question a while back as to just WHERE the server that houses the "lockers" is and why I can download from that so much faster than the server that houses the purchased items. Why is that I wonder. Why did I not get a reply to that? Hmmmmmm. Could it be because they are they same server? Who knows? Nobody is saying.

Edward Snowden probably knows.....

 

slaps self in head

 

:-P

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Everyone,

I just wanted to make you aware that we are looking into providing an alternate download option for those who are confined to the issues of Comcast.  This may take a couple weeks to implement, test and put into production on the site - but we will get that done as quickly as we can.  We are also meeting with our data center next week to see if we can address this issue in any other fashion.

Thanks for the update.

Also, I would be open to a slightly technical explanation as to how Comcast is effecting this. If they are, I want to address them armed with some info. If I'm paying for Comcast and they're hampering me from accessing web sites, then they need to address my bill and what I'm paying for.

I appreciate the notification and look forward to updates.

Thanks, AD

Thank you for the update. I am of the same mind as Art - anything would be helpful.

I know some of our posts here have been born of frustration with the situation. Rendo has the best CG marketplace going with amazing products, and more being added daily. I'm also very much looking forward to updates, and a resolution.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

adorety,

I don't have hard specifics.  The common theme throughout this thread is that these issues are pertaining to those users who have Comcast as their ISP.  There is plenty of evidence out there that supports that fact that Comcast has been throttling traffic for years. There's also evidence that supports Comcast throttling traffic that runs through Level 3 (which if you take a look at the trace routes screen shots posted in this thread you will see that connections run through Level 3 to get to Renderosity), such as this:

[ http://www.lonniewest.com/index.php/writing/technology/135-comcast2

](http://www.lonniewest.com/index.php/writing/technology/135-comcast2)

 

And this one:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/comcast-level-3-net-neutrality,news-9211.html 

Those are interesting and disheartening articles. It leaves me, the little guy, feeling powerless to confront such a monstrous corporation. It appears Verizon/Fios is in my area now. It may be time to switch or at lest threaten to switch.

Thanks again and good luck with finding a work around. I am sincerely curious to see what comes of this.

AD

I still do not believe this is Comcast. If any of you who have Comcast were to go log into your Comcast account and poke around you will find that they DO say they limit you to 250 Gig of data trans per month. I reviewed my usage and I NEVER come even close to that. Plus, why would they limit ONLY what I download from Renderosity but not DAZ or RDNA when it's volume they are concerned with? If they felt I was excessive in my data transfer they would likely limit ALL my data transfer not just that from Renderosity.Additionally, there are other people who have chimed in here a time or two with the same problem but their ISP isn't Comcast.

Now, having said all that, that isn't to say it is specifically Renderosity causing the issue. I am willing to accept the fact that there might be a technical is at some point between Renderosity's servers and certain individuals, though I find it hard to believe that only the few of us participating in this forum draw data through that specific route too.

This is interesting:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/24/tech/web/us-internet-speed/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

 

Yeah, I think when my 2-year "obligation to avoid early temination fees" is up with Crapcast, Im going to try ATT Uverse - it's the only other alternative where I live.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

mrestey,

I think if you read the following article I posted earlier the nature of the issue will make more sense to you.  I don't think it's specifically Renderosity that Comcast is targeting, nor have I ever stated such. This article demonstrates to me that perhaps the issues between Comcast and their admitted throttling of traffic through Level3 are still present.  

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/comcast-level-3-net-neutrality,news-9211.html 

Quote - Everyone,

I just wanted to make you aware that we are looking into providing an alternate download option for those who are confined to the issues of Comcast.  This may take a couple weeks to implement, test and put into production on the site - but we will get that done as quickly as we can.  We are also meeting with our data center next week to see if we can address this issue in any other fashion.

In light of the above, I have gone ahead and renewed my Prime membership. Thank you for the update, and for listening to us. :-D I'm looking forward to updates!

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

Thought you'd like to know. I downloaded a couple things tonight and DL speed was 2.6 MB/s! Hooray. Hopefully that's here to stay. If there was something done, I'm very thankful.

AD

Nothing was done on our end. But glad you were able to download at faster speeds. =)

I just downloaded several items tonight, and I'm delighted to report the download speeds were in the 1 - 3 MB/Sec range! Whatever/wherever the problem was seems to have cleared up! Hope it stays that way...

 

Thanks, Rendo! I have renewed my Prime membership.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own" - Adam Savage

I'm glad that it appears this issue has been resolved.  We have not done anything on our end as of this time that could be attributed to fixing this issue.  Hopefully it was just a glitch somewhere along the route that has gotten fixed.  

With that said, sorry for the late reply - we've been busy addressing some other items the past few days. If anyone is still having issues, please let me know.

I just have to toss in my "two cents worth"... my ex is canceling Comcast and going to Direct TV for TV and AT&T for internet.... we have had cable TV internet years before an quickly realized it's like being on a "party line"- the more users on line at once, the more everyone's speeds slow down! It was a lousy system and one we got out of as fast as possible. I would not put it past any cable company to try and bottleneck the bandwidth either...sad but true, big companies are devious.

Many in the world complain about AT&T, but I have found it to work fine for me. I get the max download speeds I am signed up for here at Rosity and at other sites. The only thing I DO do, here, is if I shop late in the day, I wait until the next morning to come and download. I notice if there is a sale ending, yes, my speeds go down a TINY bit, and I am sure it's cause everyone is shopping and buying before the coupon deadline... but it's not bad.

OH and too, back in "cable TV/internet" days, we did see the speeds were better when kids were back in school.  :)

Best,

Lyne

Life Requires Assembly and we all know how THAT goes!

A simple Comment of 5 words on a image took what seem like forever.

600.875 seconds or 10.01458 minutes.

Not sure if its a fluke or what, but this problem returned for me today.

Has been great the last month.