Something's up with your download server

[mjl1966]

For 32 bit GSX install: initial file comes down fine.  When executing to download the rest, the server keeps resetting the connection.  Downloads a good portion of a file and then resets.  I hit retry several times and got about half way through the total download, but couldn't get much further than that.  Started all over and now can't even get the first bin file to come down.

Not looking for answer or response, just letting you know. 

[virtuali]

There are no problems with the servers.

We don't have a single download server, we host the files on Amazon AWS, and they are replicated over the network of 200 Cloudflare servers, and Cloudflare will automatically choose the one closest to you that works so, it's basically impossible the server would "go down", since if Cloudflare goes down, millions of other websites will go down too ( it happened last year )

So, the most likely problem is, instead, your firewall or another security related product that interferes with the internet connection that is blocking the installer, since it might trust your browser ( so you think "my connection is fine" ), but might block our installer. Be sure nothing like firewall, antivirus, etc. is blocking the installer.

[mjl1966]

There are no problems with the servers.

We don't have a single download server, we host the files on Amazon AWS, and they are replicated over the network of 200 Cloudflare servers, and Cloudflare will automatically choose the one closest to you that works so, it's basically impossible the server would "go down", since if Cloudflare goes down, millions of other websites will go down too ( it happened last year )

So, the most likely problem is, instead, your firewall or another security related product that interferes with the internet connection that is blocking the installer, since it might trust your browser ( so you think "my connection is fine" ), but might block our installer. Be sure nothing like firewall, antivirus, etc. is blocking the installer.

It was better today - download was in the range of 6M vice 1M and I only had 4 resets.  Finally got the whole file.  Now...

I am and Amazon Certified Cloud Practitioner and have set up instances, networks and firewalls on Jeff's stuff.  I know how it works.  Could even have a conversation about elastic Beanstalks if you like.  I'm also a senior network engineer for a global company, so I know all about switches, routers and firewalls.  I download all kinds of stuff from Cloudfront servers and S3 buckets full of very large files on a regular basis. (Your 1.1G file is very small compared to the stuff I work with.)  And I didn't say the server went down - I said it was resetting connections.  I can say this:  Your GSX install setup is the ONLY thing I've downloaded from AWS in the past few days that isn't working well.  I don't know why.  But I can tell you it's not me or my firewall or my other gear that I use daily to connect to networks all over the world, including our data center in Zurich.

The reason I'm riding you a little bit here is that you have this tendency to go to the "not me" solution almost immediately in every case.  You know what?  Maybe, just maybe, it is you sometimes.  Are you 100% sure you have configured your AWS setup correctly?  Or, maybe it isn't you.  Maybe the Cloudfront server in the Hilliard DC (the one closest to me) that has cached your stuff is having trouble and you just don't know it yet because nobody has bothered to tell you.  Because you almost always say it's the customer's fault as your first response.

You're a brilliant programmer.  But just because we have a problem with your product doesn't mean we're stupid.  It just means we're having a problem.  I know what it's like, trust me.  I do deal with stupid people.  And smart people.  But I consider them all my customers and even though more than 50% of the time, it really isn't the network, I never say that to them.  Instead, I look at everything on my end that might be part of the problem because sometimes it is.  I don't make assumptions.  I verify.

I bet you didn't even log into your AWS account before you responded...  think about that for a minute.

Food for thought from one technical professional to another.

[virtuali]

Wow, you are making a lot of assumptions here, and ( from one technical professional to another ) made a technical mistake of confusing CloudFRONT, which is the decentralized server infrastructure by Amazon, with CloudFLARE, which is what I said we use, that is an entirely different service offered by a different company.

You are not downloading anything from Amazon S3 directly. You are not downloading anything from Amazon at all, your downloads are only happening through Cloudflare, which is a totally different service, that acts as a cache for all downloads, not conceptually different than Cloudfront, but not the same service and not the same configuration.

We can control what is cached by Cloudflare, and we can force a cache refresh for some files, but not much else. We don't have any control over individual nodes, or how they are assigned to end users.

Your other assumption is that, when I reply "it's not me", is done automatically before testing. That's not the case, whenever a user reports a problem, I always verify it personally BEFORE replying.

To test problems with their local connections, I use a commercial VPN software so I can test AS IF I was located elsewhere, and that's my usual routine when somebody reports a download issue. Only AFTER testing this way, I can safely say for sure the problem is local to the user. Perhaps it's a routing problem caused by their ISP. That's why I pay for a yearly subscription for that VPN, ONLY to put myself in user's shoes, so to say...

This happened TO ME, as a customer, several times. There are some servers which I know they are perfectly fine ( because I HAVE tested them with a VPN ), which become VERY SLOW if I access using my local Cable ISP. I troubleshoot that to be a routing issue, since the packet takes a very strange route and pass through places in which many packets are lost, while if I use a VPN, it's way faster and no packets are lots.

Of course, as a user, I don't go complaining to the owner of that site I cannot reach, saying "are you sure it's not you ?" because, before complain, I tested with a VPN, so I was sure the remote site was "innocent", and the problem was my own local ISP routing.

[virtuali]

And just to be sure, here's a video I just made to test download speeds from several locations:

I started with the one closest to you ( my VPN doesn't have a node in Ohio ), then I tried a couple of others in the US, some in Europe and even the worse case scenario, from Australia, resulted in a very respectable download speed, 6 minutes for the whole 2.2 GB of the GSX 64 bit installer.