What's up with downloads

[Pyrarrows]

What's with the exceedingly slow download times in OA? If I have a file downloaded over our network (such as one of the main .pk3 files) It will go in a second, but if it downloads through Open Arena, the same download will max out at 40kbps.  That's the fastest it will go... It generally goes below 10kbps, so some downloads can take a long time to get. I connected to an internet server, which wanted me to download a 2mb file, and it would have taken over an HOUR to get (2kbps) So can someone tell me why it is so slow?

I've noticed this in Quake 2, and 3 as well, so I know that it's not just OA, it's the system used to download the files in OA, and the Quake series of games

[andrewj]

I think each server can decide the maximum download rate, the purpose being to ensure downloading doesn't interfere with normal players.  Some servers have a separate download server which you can download quickly from, which is good.

Getting the mappack (see the Wiki for it) means you can play on a lot more servers which use those maps (like AEDESERT or BUBCTF3), though right now I'm not using most of them since some bots stopped loading on some maps in single player mode (e.g. OA_RPG3DM2).

[pulchr]

i know that it's up to the server administrators to set a good download rate, but i feel that the standard setting should be upped a little

[Pyrarrows]

thanks!

That's what I was wondering about.

[escapedturkey]

The server has to be set-up redirect in order to achieve high speed downloads for clients/players.

Maps and mods hosted at a website, example: http://turkey.escapedturkey.net/openarena/baseoa/

Server set for redirect.

Example:

set sv_allowDownloads "1"
set sv_dlURL "http://mydomain.com/openarena"

[kit89]

A Local Area Network will always have a faster download rate than across the internet.

Most OA servers will redirect you to an http server to download the required MODS. Where the download rate is only restricted by your own connection most of the time.

I usually get a download rate of 100KB/s to 1500KB/s from the Rainbow servers.