Manual Downloads
 

Is it just me, or is the speed of the manual downloads SIGNIFICANTLY faster than last year? I downloaded my copies of the manuals at 100k/s, which is fairly impressive when you consider that last year it was near impossible to download some of those large files at the speeds that we were getting from that server, and many of the mirrors that people eventually got up became just as bogged down.

This might be because FIRST got more bandwidth, or maybe it is just that the files are smaller this year, but whatever it is, it sure made my evening easier. Did anyone else notice this?

--Chris Casinghino
Team 131

Yes, I did notice a dramatic difference in speed. I was averaging around 75k/s while downloading all the documents yesterday, compared to last year when I averaged about 7.5k/s. The download did, however, slow down when it was time for the KOP to be downloaded, but it was still faster that 7.5k/s.

Site
 

I believe FIRST's new page was designed by Autodesk, and if so, they may be hosting as well. If this is true, they may be hosting on a much faster connection, say, a T-3, as opposed to last year, where it may have been a T-1. This would accomodate for much higher bandwith demands, as well as many more connections accepted to download the files. I myself was cruising around 90kb/sec, whereas last year it was nearly impossible until a few days after.

Yeah this year I got a lot better download speeds than last year. I am glad that their servers are better this year and the new web page is pretty nice too.