Download Speeds

[softair]

Have had a small Ubuntu 10.04LTS Server/SqueezeServer system running happily for sometime, set up with the enormous help found here. For various reasons I decided it was time to update the software and look at using VMs, and everything has turned into a tail of woe...

Deciding to upgrade to 12.04LTS I bit the bullet and did a clean install (or rather tried to). The installation came to a grinding halt trying to update apt: I cancelled out and ended up with a perfectly usable Server, and went off to do "sudo apt-get update" and that took over 8 hours to download the updates. I don't remember anything like this problem when I had several goes at installing the original 10.04 system and doing updates. (Decided to try going back to 10.04, but that appears to have the same problem now and looked like taking the same time).

Googling around I came across suggestions that one could improve the situation by changing the download sites in the sources file. Did that - helped a little maybe. Couldn't use the "find fastest" facility because the VNC/GUI version doesn't work properly. And I'm getting nowhere fast. Currently downloading (via the mechanism you describe) Logitech Media Server - it's going to take around 2 hours at a guess. While this is running I have downloaded a second copy directly onto my windows XP machine from the Logitech web site: took 2.5 minutes (over the same connection).

Which leads me to ask if there's something fundamentally wrong with the Ubuntu package installation/download system these days, or something really weird with my system. If I was to start from scratch with either a 10.04 or 12.04 server CD install I reckon it would take nearly 10 hours. (Oh - running VNC and connecting to the server I can surf the web using the browser and get what appears to be perfectly normal download speeds).

Any suggestion (apart from throwing a brick at it)?

Bob

[softair]

Hmmm... seem to have found the answer: do anything that involves accessing the repository during the weekend. Did a new install from scratch and the speeds now appear reasonably acceptable, without messing about changing the sources file. Onwards... !!!

[Ian]

Hi,

I've seen similar issues with their repositories at times. When it first happened I thought it was a contention/traffic issue with my ISP but downloading from other sites onto the same server was very zippy.

Anyway, glad it's sorted.

Ian.

[softair]

It's much slower again today!

Even using the "find best" trick!

Bob