Just a quick question- what`s the deal with the minimal thread size, and the number of threads in the advanced options menu? Is a higher min thread size better for faster downloading, and are more or less threads better?
Dear James,
Thank you for writing us.
The minimal thread size parameter determines:
a) number of threads for small files (say, Download Express will open only two threads for 70 Kb file)
b) necessity of help of one thread to another, when some thread has ended its job.
For fast Internet connection you don`t need to use the small (10-15 kb) min. thread size. It makes sense for slow internet connections to complete downloads faster (threads will help each other more intensively.)
For slow modem connections and slow servers more threads is better.
For high connection speed you may use 2 or 3 threads.
Best regards,
Alexander Bednyakov
MP Staff
Thank you for writing us.
The minimal thread size parameter determines:
a) number of threads for small files (say, Download Express will open only two threads for 70 Kb file)
b) necessity of help of one thread to another, when some thread has ended its job.
For fast Internet connection you don`t need to use the small (10-15 kb) min. thread size. It makes sense for slow internet connections to complete downloads faster (threads will help each other more intensively.)
For slow modem connections and slow servers more threads is better.
For high connection speed you may use 2 or 3 threads.
Best regards,
Alexander Bednyakov
MP Staff
You and other producers of "multiple thread" download products should be aware that I personally consider opening multiple channels to download the same file from my site to be a denial of service attack. If I catch someone doing it, I immediately ban them. If they try again, I ban their entire ISP.
Site owners establish bandwidth limits on individual connections for a reason - to ensure that the site remains available to more people. In creating a product to bypass such restrictions, you do neither your customers nor site owners a favor.
> Dear James,
> > Thank you for writing us.
> The minimal thread size parameter determines:
> a) number of threads for small files (say, Download Express will open only two threads for 70 Kb file)
> b) necessity of help of one thread to another, when some thread has ended its job.
> > For fast Internet connection you don`t need to use the small (10-15 kb) min. thread size. It makes sense for slow internet connections to complete downloads faster (threads will help each other more intensively.)
> > For slow modem connections and slow servers more threads is better.
> For high connection speed you may use 2 or 3 threads.
> > Best regards,
> Alexander Bednyakov
> MP Staff
Site owners establish bandwidth limits on individual connections for a reason - to ensure that the site remains available to more people. In creating a product to bypass such restrictions, you do neither your customers nor site owners a favor.
> Dear James,
> > Thank you for writing us.
> The minimal thread size parameter determines:
> a) number of threads for small files (say, Download Express will open only two threads for 70 Kb file)
> b) necessity of help of one thread to another, when some thread has ended its job.
> > For fast Internet connection you don`t need to use the small (10-15 kb) min. thread size. It makes sense for slow internet connections to complete downloads faster (threads will help each other more intensively.)
> > For slow modem connections and slow servers more threads is better.
> For high connection speed you may use 2 or 3 threads.
> > Best regards,
> Alexander Bednyakov
> MP Staff
Jeffrey L Hayes:
We understand your concers about multi-thread downloads. You are right that there are some users that will use a lot of your Web site bandwidth.
However there are more common cases when multithread downloads (MD) do not hurt your Web site, but help users a lot. Many dial-up users have a very slow connection speed. They can load 4-8 kilobytes per second. When you start downloading a big file via a modem, the download speed degrades with the time. For example, the initial download speed is about 5 kilobytes/second, in 10 minutes it may fall to 3.5-4, in a hour - 1-2 kbs. Yes, you can restart the download to get higher download speed again, but this means that you have to monitor the download process all the time.
MD technique overcomes this speed degradation and the dial-up download speed remains fairly constant until the file gets downloaded.
This way, banning such dial-up users will really hurt them, while this limitation will not help your Web site.
Also, this multithread capability became standard for many downloaders nowdays. Almost all of them support this feature, so banning any multithreaded users you will get rid of almost all of your site visitors.
We plan to add the mirrors feature to our products soon, so each file fragment will be loaded from a different server. This will help to solve problems of both Web site owners and users.
There is another way to solve the problem for you. Can you modify your server settings to add the following line to the HTTP responce headers:
MassDownloader=1
If Mass Downloader or Download Express notices this line when getting the first Web server responce, it will use only one thread to download files.
Best regards,
Oleg Chernavin
MP Staff
We understand your concers about multi-thread downloads. You are right that there are some users that will use a lot of your Web site bandwidth.
However there are more common cases when multithread downloads (MD) do not hurt your Web site, but help users a lot. Many dial-up users have a very slow connection speed. They can load 4-8 kilobytes per second. When you start downloading a big file via a modem, the download speed degrades with the time. For example, the initial download speed is about 5 kilobytes/second, in 10 minutes it may fall to 3.5-4, in a hour - 1-2 kbs. Yes, you can restart the download to get higher download speed again, but this means that you have to monitor the download process all the time.
MD technique overcomes this speed degradation and the dial-up download speed remains fairly constant until the file gets downloaded.
This way, banning such dial-up users will really hurt them, while this limitation will not help your Web site.
Also, this multithread capability became standard for many downloaders nowdays. Almost all of them support this feature, so banning any multithreaded users you will get rid of almost all of your site visitors.
We plan to add the mirrors feature to our products soon, so each file fragment will be loaded from a different server. This will help to solve problems of both Web site owners and users.
There is another way to solve the problem for you. Can you modify your server settings to add the following line to the HTTP responce headers:
MassDownloader=1
If Mass Downloader or Download Express notices this line when getting the first Web server responce, it will use only one thread to download files.
Best regards,
Oleg Chernavin
MP Staff
any news regarding the mirrors feature?
Emess,
Thank you for writing us.
We plan to implement stream protocols support first, in the 3.1 version.
Mirror search feature is planned for 3.2 version.
Best regards,
Alexander Bednyakov
MP Staff
Thank you for writing us.
We plan to implement stream protocols support first, in the 3.1 version.
Mirror search feature is planned for 3.2 version.
Best regards,
Alexander Bednyakov
MP Staff