Bad speeds to Apple services

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Bad speeds to Apple services

Swemoph

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#223738 15-Oct-2017 17:06

Has anyone else been having issues with speed on Apple services as of late? App Store downloads, developer portal and software updates all take an extremely long amount of time to complete, and this is an issue on both Spark Fiber and Spark 4G. I have not been able to test on any other providers. Currently trying to download an iOS firmware file and it's downloading at ~192kb/s.

This has been going on for the past few weeks. Can confirm it is not a connection issue on my end as all my speed test results are absolutely fine (100mb/s over WiFi and ~50-60mb/s over cellular). I'm certain it isn't Apple as in the past their services are usually very fast. That leaves me thinking there's something wrong with the way Spark is dealing with Apple-bound traffic.

Download in Safari:

WiFi Speed test (Spark 100 fiber):

Are there any other debugging steps I can take here to try and isolate the cause of this issue?

Thanks!

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#1883861 15-Oct-2017 17:47

provide a download link to the files you are having issues with (if you can) so others can see if they have the same problems.

the few apples downloads ive tried have all been line speed. on spark VDSL

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#1883862 15-Oct-2017 17:49

Are you using the Spark DNS or 3rd party?

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dfnt

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#1883870 15-Oct-2017 17:58

I did have slowness a few weeks ago but haven't noticed anything since. I couldn't even update apps on either Spark VDSL and 4G as they'd just hang trying to download.

Edit: Yeah, it's happening again. Trying to update an app and its going slower than usual

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zocster

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#1883887 15-Oct-2017 18:32

I'm having issues on Vodafone... I think it's apple.. Maybe I'm running beta but I doubt it...

coffeebaron

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#1883894 15-Oct-2017 18:45

People doing their iOS11 updates?

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michaelmurfy

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#1883913 15-Oct-2017 18:55

Just tested this with an iPhone 8 IPSW image:

Confirm you're not running a third party DNS service.

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#1883916 15-Oct-2017 18:59

Getting full line speed too

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Talkiet

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#1883918 15-Oct-2017 19:01

Over the last few months, Apple have decreased their reliance on local CDNs to basically zero, and as yet there's no local option for ISPs to pick up Apple traffic in NZ. That said, your speeds suck.

Apple do a good job of scheduling and pacing their IOS upgrades - spreading the load over the 24 hours of the day and across several weeks but if there's an issue with any of the upstreams we don't have direct visibility anymore given their decision to withdraw from using local CDNs.

There's obviously nothing wrong with your actual connection at least :-) I'll speak to someone upstream in the morning and see if we have any idea of any upstream Apple issues...

Cheers - N

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zocster

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#1883944 15-Oct-2017 19:06

OS updates seem fine, just app updates, newsfeed widget missing thumbnails etc...

Again I'm on fibre X... So feeling is its apple

Swemoph

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#1883955 15-Oct-2017 19:36

Thanks for the responses! This is a direct link to the IPSW that I'm downloading from the dev portal. Currently using Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4), not too sure what DNS is used by my phone on cellular though. Looks like this issue is affecting a few people. Do you think that changing my DNS to Spark's servers would have any effect?

@Talkiet - Hmmm, that's an interesting decision from Apple. Thanks for that .

michaelmurfy

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#1883959 15-Oct-2017 20:06

That is not an official Apple URL and looks to be coming from a questionable source (the IP address is from China). Download it from here instead and it should max out your line.

A good place to grab Apple firmware is from https://ipsw.me which links you to the official Apple download URL.

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LennonNZ

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#1883960 15-Oct-2017 20:06

Using a third party DNS Server can affect where you are directed towards for caching servers. Unless there is a specific reason you are using third party DNS Servers I suggest people use the one supplied to them.

The link you have given say http://220.243.193.33/.. (This is in China and comes down at 250KB/s but when I go the developer site the download link is: http://appldnld.apple.com/..... and comes down at 10MB/s

220.243.193.33 is NOT an apple server so you must have an incorrect Link (You are not downloading from the APple developer site), Your machine has a virus/infected or you are purposely proxying your traffic via a machine in China.

Edit: changed japan -> china

Jase2985

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#1883962 15-Oct-2017 20:08

im getting about 220KB/s with that link you provided, on spark VDSL

The link MM provided im getting line speed

Swemoph

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#1883967 15-Oct-2017 20:26

Trying the links provided here, as well as https://ipsw.me still had speed issues for me. That being said I just flicked over to Spark's DNS servers as recommended (122.56.237.1 and 210.55.111.1) and my speeds are back up as they should be.

The address I provided did come after I started the download from https://developer.apple.com so I'm not totally sure why I was redirected to that weird IP address, however after the DNS server change it's downloading from official Apple servers instead. Possible Google is having an issue with their dns servers? I'll also run a virus scan to be totally sure that's not a problem.

Thanks everyone!

yitz

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#1883968 15-Oct-2017 20:28

The previous URL http://220.243.193.33/appldnld.apple.com/... looks fine it belongs to some federated CDN node somewhere in Europe and looks perfectly legit to me. Apple will most likely be using a variety of CDNs to distribute these files.

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