Video Downloads

BROADBAND SPEED TEST

TheSailingChannel uses an Edge Server near you running on the Amazon Web Services Content Delivery Network. This minimizes the distance a file must travel between a server and your location making our Video Downloads much faster and more reliable. However, a slow Internet connection can still cause issues. Use these sites to test your actual Internet connection speed then plug it in to the download time calculators below. Our averge file size is 1GB. If you are not getting the speed advertised by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), call them and find out why.

CABLE VS. DSL

By: Vangie Beal Posted: 06-03-2005 , Last Updated: 12-09-2010 on Wepopedia.com

Unless you live or work in a remote or very rural area, you probably have the option of giving up (if you haven't already) that slow dial-up modem and investing in a broadband Internet connection. If high-speed Internet services are available, your choice is between DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) or cable modem services. Both DSL and cable modems are common home networking broadband connection technologies - but which option is better?

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TRACEROUTE

Traceroute, also called tracepath or tracert, is a network tool used to determine the "path" packets take from one IP address to another.

There are many "hops" between your computer and our server. The Internet attempts to find the most efficient pathway for your file download, but sometmes, a hop has a problem and can stop the download cold. If you wait a couple of hours Internet engineers will probably have fixed the problem.

Note that bad hops usually don't effect website connections, since webpages download extremely fast. But when you download a large video file, the connection needs to remain stable for a much longer time. Sometimes, a bad hop will cause your connection to timeout and the download will fail. Runnnig a traceroute back to our server can tell you if there are any problems along the path.

You can run the traceroute command directly from your computer through your terminal program or by using a special website. www.whatismyipaddress.com has traceroute and several other useful tools.

In your terminal program, just enter the command: traceroute 198.106.50.6
That's the IP address of our sever which is sending you your video download. Here's an example of a 13-hop traceroute from our server in the U.S. to a user in Australia (we've x-ed out the destination IP for privacy). If there is a problem, a hop will stall and the trace will stop before it reaches the destination IP address.

> traceroute 136.xxx.xxx.xx
traceroute to 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 161.58.109.129 (161.58.109.129) 0.584 ms 0.525 ms 0.737 ms
2 ge-1-0-0-453.r00.stngva01.us.wh.verio.net (198.65.47.17) 0.611 ms 0.734 ms 0.850 ms
3 vl-5.r01.stngva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.27.190) 0.611 ms 0.595 ms 0.489 ms
4 xe-5-1-0.r21.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.84) 2.360 ms 1.811 ms 2.110 ms
5 ae-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.4) 1.611 ms 3.714 ms 29.968 ms
6 as-2.r21.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.24) 63.202 ms 68.765 ms 71.321 ms
7 po-2.r00.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.250) 67.324 ms 65.706 ms 62.951 ms
8 ge-1-20.r00.lsanca03.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (204.1.253.166) 218.992 ms 221.466 ms 213.373 ms
9 so-4-0-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.157) 219.243 ms 219.619 ms 219.242 ms
10 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.33) 225.490 ms 233.391 ms 230.615 ms
11 gigabitethernet0.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.130) 240.481 ms 416.550 ms 291.703 ms
12 gw1.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.142) 239.605 ms 234.885 ms 229.364 ms
13 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx) 240.231 ms * 238.380 ms

If your download times out, try running traceroute to see if there are any holdups along the path.

DOWNLOAD TIME CALCULATORS

Click on the calculator below to get an idea of how long it will take to download your video based on file size and the speed of your Internet connection. To get a quick estimate, use 1GB as the file size. This is the average file size of our Video Downloads.

The 10 Mbps Thin Ethernet setting is a popular broadeband cable modem speed. If you have Verizon FIOS, your speed could approach 44.736 Mbps T3/DS3. Unfortunately, many U.S. users have much slower broadband speeds, more like 768 Kbps or lower.

T1 Shopper File Transfer Time/Speed Calculator

OTHER DOWNLOAD TIME CALCULATORS - Use these for comparison

Your actual transfer speeds will likely be a bit slower than the calculator shows. Why? Because on a normal Internet connection your transfer speed is decreased by:

The quality of the line and your connection to the the Internet specifically you can read up on the influence of latency and jitter.
There's certain amount of your bandwidth used by your modem and ISP in just in keeping the line open! This background use known as "physical signaling overhead" isn't available to you during your transfer. For example, the advertised transfer speed of a T1 line is 1,536 Kbps however 192 Kbps is usually tied up in the T1 line signaling protocol so the best you'll ever get is 1,344 Kbps.
But wait, there's more background use! There's Layer 4 transport and transmission protocol maintainence/overhead. Amazingly, these below processes can eat up to 10% of your transfer speed. Handshaking negotiation procedures between you and the place you are transferring the file such as "slow start" described technically in RFC 2001. TCP overhead, error checking and sending of protocol header(e.g. Each IPv4 header is 160 bits, each UDP header is 64 bits, etc.)