twilightzone download speed

[CMonster]

ya'll will think I'm crazy but here goes...

Has this ever happened to anyone..

I have a $19(POS) BTC ISA V/90 Winmodem on this play box and I was connected ppp to www.trivision.net @28,800

I was downloading some Linux FTP files from www.metalab.unc.org, they were in the .gz format, when suddenly my download rate went off the scale - well it peaked at 15.2 KB/sec and it said I was downloading almost a MB a minute! I thought this had to be a mistake but I let it finish just for grins and giggles - In 20 minutes I downloaded an 18+MB file!!! Still thinking this was impossible I checked the file properties - there it was, 18.4MB - and when I went to install the file it was good..!!??

Deciding to take advantage of the situation I quickly reconnected to my ISP and went back to download everything I could -- but things were back to a snail's download pace..

any ideas what caused this freak occurance? I would really like to perform that tweak on a regular basis.

No joke.. George



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 05-09-99).]

[ENVY]

Well,Did ya pinch youself?Were you awake? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[DavidX]

The truth is out there somewhere . . .

[CMonster]

Thanks ENVY...here it is the next day and the file is still there at 18+mb ..unless I am still sleeping ..Matrox?????

Today I talked in person with one of the chief employees of my ISP (and future son-in-law --needless to say I get an account for free), and he concurs that I must have been dreaming.

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 05-09-99).]

[gradius]

I think ( but am not totally sure ) that it might have to do with the data compression on your modem, and blank spaces. Now, I might not be able to explain this without a visual aid, so I made one.
Below are two URLs to the EXACT same picture of <3Gillian Anderson<3 from my website. The only difference is that one of the pictures is 1,014,333 bytes big, and the other, only 14,333 bytes. How is this so? Well, the first picture has 1,000,000 bytes of blank spaces stored in it. When downloading it your modem's data compression kicks in, and kicks up the speed (assuming you have data compression on). check it out for yourself.

members.tripod.com/opticeuphoria/gill.jpg (http://members.tripod.com/opticeuphoria/gill.jpg)

gill.jpg = 1,014,333 bytes

members.tripod.com/opticeuphoria/gill2.jpg (http://members.tripod.com/opticeuphoria/gill2.jpg)

gill2.jpg = 14,333 bytes

Your file might have had these extranious bytes in it, and therefore appeared to download faster.

Of course, what do I know. I'm just esi-messi-guessing..

[hhieu]

Good point, gradius

But how could you "put" the blank spaces in it?

[gradius]

Well, I used a small 6kb .com file called Resize that allows you to change the size of any file. If you want to make the file bigger, it adds blank spaces to the file, but if you try to make the file smaller, it deletes the difference.

But I only did that for an illustration. How or why the "empty data" would be in the files Cmonster was downloading is beyond me.

[CMonster]

Thanks gradius,

I don't know if there are any blank spaces in gzip files..but I appreciate your input. I was thinking along the lines that somehow the file was being decompressed by "ZipMagic," which I had running in the background, as it was downloading or something..this was really weird.

[hai]

What don't you try to compress that file with pkzip,arj, or rar? Just figure out if it can be compressed further.

[emcron]

Hey Cmonster if what gradius says its right, then there is an easy way to test it. Just go back and download the exact same file and see what happens. If the blanks are there then you should get the same effect.

[raihanan]

Did you attempt to download the file earlier? Perhaps much of it was cached in a temp file.

-- Jeff

[CMonster]

I just attempted to download the same file from the same server using a different computer and an old 33.6 modem - the same thing happened - the download rate went soaring, peaking at 14.7KB/sec - so it's not on my end..

another strange thing is that the file size is listed at 6.2MB but when download is over 18MB..

Here is the URL http://www.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/kde and the file is "kdebase-1.1.tar.gz"

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 05-11-99).]