Abysmal download speeds

[tempor]

I've got a 50mbit/second (6ish MB/s) connection from my ISP, however downloads from MCC never seem to surpass 3-5KB/s.
In practice my 50mbit generally results with download speeds from other sources of around 3-5MB/s.
This is pretty frustrating as it can take more an an hour to download a single issue!

Speedtest.net and a few test downloads from other sites lead me to believe the issue is with the MCC server, and not my connection

Using Chrome 32 on a Mac running OS X 10.9.1

Please let me know if you need any other info

[Geo]

How much did you try to download in one go? I've noticed a decrease that runs to crippling after sucking down a couple of the larger PDFs. Trying to grab all of Beyond Rubies at once is a non-starter.

[tempor]

First noticed it yesterday after trying to download 3 issues of Hidden Knowledge. I figured it was throttling and wasn't really concerned. When it didn't go back up tonight I got frustrated. >10kb/s is ridiculous for a subscription service. I'm all for fighting piracy of this kind of stuff, but throttling is incredibly unfriendly (if that's what it is).

[Daphne]

I've got a 50mbit/second (6ish MB/s) connection from my ISP, however downloads from MCC never seem to surpass 3-5KB/s.

If they never go over 5KB/s, then there's a problem on your end; I just ran our 100Mb/s connection here full-out.

We do start throttling after three downloads in a twenty-four hour period. I'll be honest: The reason we supply downloads is to make it easy for people to get all of the new releases, not to do a site rip.

[tempor]

Okay it's probably throttling then. Haven't done any downloading outside of this first 24 hour period. As a new subscriber I'm just trying to catch up on the series that I'm interested in, downloading from issue one and working my way up is the simplest way to do that imo. I totally get the need to protect yourselves from piracy etc.

[Daphne]

We're not happy about it as a solution either, sadly, because I hate things that penalize honest customers because of pirates. (I'll mention that we're also, though, trying to steer people away from the "subscribe for a month every year and download everything" model.)

That being said, we have a person whose full-time job it is to send out DMCA notices; he sends out 5-20 a day for our content. It's a problem.

[Geo]

He's doing a good job. I stumble across next to nothing active these days.

[tempor]

I think one of the biggest things that would steer people away from the once a year model would be more frequently occurring updates to fewer comics. There's a HUGE number of individual series but it's almost too much to keep track of, especially since it can be many months in between issues.

[Salanar]

...or patience is a virtue. Sure, I wish my favourite comics got dedicated updates, but they generally don't. However, I do get to check out other content that I might have skipped over had I not seen it here. You never know, you might be surprised by the good stuff floating around between your preferred updates.

[Haight]

I'd prefer that there were fewer comics updated more regularly, but doing it the way they do it now allows a wider network of people involved in the site and has fewer points of failure. 

[tempor]

Patience is a virtue, but also one that I'm paying for. If there's a month where the only issues that come out are ones I'm not really interested then that's a month that I don't really want to pay for. My point was only that if you want subscribers to stay engaged you have to keep their attention.

[Daphne]

If there's a month where the only issues that come out are ones I'm not really interested then that's a month that I don't really want to pay for.

We assure you, we never run a comic that we think no one will be interested in.

[tempor]

Oh, I absolutely didn't mean to imply that I thought that a series would be uninteresting, I simply meant that I have my own preferences, as I'm sure all of your subscribers do. I didn't mean to generalize, simply to say that there are comics that I don't find as interesting as others offered on the site. Not to say that others might like those comics better than comics I think are good.

[krooks88]

Hello!

I had a couple quick questions.  I downloaded a few comics last night, and I understand that that can cause the next couple to be incredibly slow, for the next 24 hours.  However, mine slowed down to 1kb/second (which seemed slow, even by slow standards), and then 'failed' this morning.  Now when I've tried to download some, I get a 502 Bad Gateway page with nginx/1.1.19 underneath it.  Is this also a result of too many downloads in too short a time?  I am pretty computer/internet illiterate, so I'm really not sure how this happened, or if there is a fix or anything!

Thanks in advance!

[Daphne]

Is this also a result of too many downloads in too short a time?

Yes. Give it a while to reset, and you'll be fine.