MWeb Uncapped: All MP3 downloads stall and fail

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SabreWolfy

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This message has been posted in the ADSL ISP section, under the "MWEB Uncapped ADSL - Official Q&A" thread and to the "MWEB Uncapped Subscribers Feedback" thread. A suggestion was made that I start a new thread here. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

The MWeb rep. on the official thread is assisting me with this problem and I have reported it telephonically to MWeb technical support. In the interests of getting other opinions and assistance, I'm posting here too.

Browsing, email and audio streaming on my uncapped 384kbps line work perfectly. I am not running any local proxies, firewalls or anti-virus software. Downloads of large (tens of megabytes) files (.deb and .tar.bz2 for example) complete successfully, downloading at full speed of 38kBps. Any files downloaded over SSH, SCP or from HTTPS sites complete successfully. The few flash videos I have tested have downloaded successfully.

Since the evening of Wednesday 14 April 2010, all HTTP downloads of MP3 files (podcasts, not music, but of course this makes no difference) from local and international sites stall, do not resume and eventually fail before completing. They download at full speed of 38kBps before they stall. They do not always stall at the same place, but often they do.

These downloads fail to complete on two wired desktops (Ubuntu Linux, using wget and Firefox) and two wireless laptops (Vista, using Chrome and Internet Explorer). They also fail on Windows XP (Internet Explorer) inside a VirtualBox virtual machine on one of the desktop machines. Very small MP3 files (less than 3MB) have all downloaded successfully. Files of 6MB or larger fail.

I have examined logs from wget and from the console version of WireShark, but these have not been helpful. On occassion, wget reports "connection reset by peer". The Vista machine reported that the "connection has been reset". These errors are only reported occassionally. Most times, the download simply stops at 0kBps and does not continue. The multitheaded console downloader 'aria2' was also unable to completely download files. It reported time-outs and eventually terminated the download. I've tested many different files with the various programs on many occasions. All downloads run at 38kBps before stopping.

Downloads also fail on my line when using a different router and username login. They do not fail with my router and username on a line at a different location.

I have hard-reset my router twice and tested with default settings as well as with my restored settings. My line/port has been reset twice in the last few days and Telkom reports that the line is working correctly.

I am left with no conclusion other than that the problem exists upstream of my router. That means my line or a proxy server, a caching server or a shaping server.

Any suggestions welcome. I've completely and utterly exhausted my options.

Update: In addition to my comments above about .deb and other files downloading successfully, I have just completed a download of a 125MB .mp4 file at full-speed without any problems. Only mp3 files over HTTP are failing.
 
Gordon_R said:
So, just for interest, how patient do you have to be to download 125MB on a 384K line ;-)
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54 minutes. At 38kBps it "should" have taken 56 minutes, so it's pretty good going. For the price, I'm happy with 384. Start the download, forget about it, do something else. At this stage, I'm delighted when anything actually finishes downloading :)
 
This is actually quite interesting.

The first part of fault finding is replicating the issue. If I use Internet Explorer, an MP3 from beemp3.com will not start. But if I use FDM, the file comes in at full speed and completes.

Why dont you try FDM or another download application and see what your results are.
 
mrudling said:
This is actually quite interesting.

The first part of fault finding is replicating the issue. If I use Internet Explorer, an MP3 from beemp3.com will not start. But if I use FDM, the file comes in at full speed and completes.

Why dont you try FDM or another download application and see what your results are.
Click to expand...

I have replicated the problem using 'wget', 'aria2' (multithreaded like FDM) and Firefox under Ubuntu Linux and using Chrome and Internet Explorer in Vista and Internet Explorer in Windows XP in a virtual machine.
 
very interesting. Like you say, it is likely an issue on the proxy/cache servers. Hopefully they can work it out for you/us. I havent had any issues with FDM so perhaps you should give it a try. Good luck :)
 
dahduh said:
I've isolated a sequence of 11 bytes that can't be downloaded. Here's a hex dump (the corresponding characters appear to the right):

0000: 3c 3c 3c 3c 30 00 00 00 00 3c 3c <<<<0....<<

If I put these 11 bytes in a file all by itself, then when I try to download the file from the web server via FTP in binary transfer mode, the transfer pauses for about a minute, then ends without error; but no bytes are transferred. Remove a single byte or change a single byte, no problem.

<snip>
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Created a file with that sequence in it and managed to upload and download it fine, so if the problem is the same -- which it very likely is -- my faulty DSLAM chokes on a different sequence. I wonder what it is ...
 
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saixbot said:
Clearly dahduh is legend!

Hectic, my head is still spinning after reading all that tech gumph, pretty impressive sh*t.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...nloading-files
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Indeed. I've made a few attempts to determine if a particular sequence is choking my DSLAM, but without success. The last fragment of the file I received can be uploaded and downloaded without error to my MWeb "homepage". Sadly, it seems that dahduh is no longer active on the forums. I'd have enjoyed his input on the matter.
 
Try to get one of the MP3s that it gets stuck on from somewhere else, then you also know where the download gets stuck so you should have a rough idea where to look in the file.

That is even if the same thing is happening here. I still find it baffling that a certain sequence can trip up a DSLAM.
 
qinglung said:
Try to get one of the MP3s that it gets stuck on from somewhere else, then you also know where the download gets stuck so you should have a rough idea where to look in the file.

That is even if the same thing is happening here. I still find it baffling that a certain sequence can trip up a DSLAM.
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I certainly have not been able to confirm that a particular sequence is responsible for the stalled downloads.

Having said that, I have reported the problem to MWeb, who have told me that Telkom would be looking into it.

I tried downloading some problematic MP3's today. One of them stopped twice, but did eventually complete. All the others downloaded to completion on the first attempt, so it looks like the problem has been solved! :) I don't want to speak to soon though ... :)
 
Dunno if this is related but I can hardly finish any Http download on my Mweb account. One fix that I believe may work is to not browse while the file is downloading (I'm not sure about that, may be wishful thinking); that is impractical though. I really hope Mweb sorts this out.
 
Yep, this is driving me nuts. Any download works fine, but MP3 files are failing. This is becoming a problem for me because I'm probably about 10 days behind on my podcast schedule. Anyone figured this out yet?
 
[SOLVED]

After the extensive testing I did, MWeb (forum rep.) was satisfied that the problem lay upstream and reported the matter to Telkom.

Within a day MWeb (forum rep.) contacted me again to report that Telkom had moved my line to a different DSLAM/port and once again anything and everything downloads to completion the first time.

Very happy :)
 
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SabreWolfy said:
After the extensive testing I did, MWeb was satisfied that the problem lay upstream and reported the matter to Telkom.

Within a day MWeb contacted me again to report that Telkom had moved my line to a different DSLAM/port and once again anything and everything downloads to completion the first time.

Very happy :)
Click to expand...
Hi, are speeds any better or the same?
 
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