Unfortunate discovery...

[Dragon_Myst]

I just discovered that I am getting about 10% of my available download speed, available through my ISP... I currently have a 300+Mbps connection, and Newsbin is achieving in the low 30's... The speed limiter is disabled, so I'm wondering if there is a setting I have overlooked, somewhere. Any suggestion is appreciated.

[Quade]

What news server are you using? If you look down at the status bar where it says "Cache" during download, what to the numbers show? "XX/YY"

If the first number tends toward zero. It suggests Newsbin is having a hard time saving the data to disk fast enough. If the first number stays relatively large, it's probably a slow network issue. Maybe throttling or slow server. I'd look for errors in the logging tab too.

[Dragon_Myst]

Thanks, Quade.

I just opened a new account with News Demon. I read through their documentation, and didn't see any information about throttling. I use Cactus VPN (along with SmartDNS), so I doubt TWC is aware of too terribly much. I know TWC will throttle, if they can. However, with both a VPN connection and SmartDNS enabled (at the router), I don't see that they would be throttling 90% of my speed.

I fired off a download to check the figures for which you asked. Cache remains at 0/200. On this particular download, however, I am seeing a fluctuation of between 2/3 of my available (burst) max, and about 110%. Since I'm downloading to an ssd, on a SATA III, with 32 GB RAM. I have a completely separate SATA III SSD dedicated for both temp and SWAP/Page File. I can't imagine that this would be the bottleneck.

I thought to check for errors in the logging tab, but it's scrolling FAR too fast to even attempt any reading. I would actually have to pause the download to read any of the log entries. As it stands, at present, I'm quite satisfied to throttle it at 3/4 speed, to allow my network media streaming a little bit of bandwidth. I'll check different download sources, and their respective results. I'll try to remember to report back my findings, if there are any issues that arise, again.

Thanks again.

- DM

[Quade]

I'd turn off "Show server commands" in the network options. The tends to overload the logging at high speeds.

How much RAM do you have? If you have >8 gigs.

[Performance]
ChunkCacheSize=2000

Might set this in the configuration file. Make sure you exit first. Then edit the NBI file with wordpad. I'd make a backup before you did it.

When you start Newsbin you should see it say 2000/2000 now. Then try some downloads. If it uses too much RAM, reduce it. With some changes I made in 6.60, this cache makes and even larger difference when downloading. I'm not recommending 6.60 because it's still beta, just comment that I've improved this in 6.60.

[Dragon_Myst]

Quade,

I made the recommended changes and, downloading nzb files, I actually experienced a severe drop in d/l speed. At present, I am seeing a fluctuation between 70Mbps and 85Mbps. This is from less than a quarter to just over a quarter of my available bandwidth. Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated.

- DM

[Quade]

Of all the people who have done this, you're the only one who it's slowed down. Most of the others are pushing 300 Mbps download speeds. All the cache does is store the file in memory then write it out in one go from memory instead having to read/write the chunks from disk.

Maybe you're not downloading the same kinds of files they are. Back it down to 500 and see what happens. Maybe it's pushing your machine into paging. If you're downloading small files like image files. It won't help because they're already banging on the disk.

You could give 6.60B5 a try. If you want to be able to switch back and forth. Make a copy of the Newsbin program files folder before you install on top. Then you can just rename the folder to run the version you want.

[Dragon_Myst]

That wouldn't surprise me, at all. It's just my luck that I'd be the "odd man out..." (LOL) At any rate, I played with different values, ranging from 200 to 4000. My paging occurs on a separate SSD, so that should not be too terribly tight of a bottleneck, even if it did get pushed to that limit. The value has yet to dip below 1000 during operation (unless I set it below that), and even then, I was only at around 1200... I was transferring large compressed files, if that helps.

I went to try downloading the beta, then opened my already installed version, and found I'm already running (6.55: 00 06 CE 98 42 40 ). Did I download the beta, by mistake, the first time? I look forward to your thoughts, on this.

- DM

[Quade]

My paging occurs on a separate SSD, so that should not be too terribly tight of a bottleneck, even if it did get pushed to that limit.

Paging destroys performance. Doesn't matter what drive it's one. If you have 8 gigs of RAM, I wouldn't go over 1000. If you have 4 or less, I'd probably not go over 400-500.

Your performance issue may have nothing to do with the cache. If you watch the cache status and it doesn't go to zero then the cache isn't your bottleneck.

6.55 is the current release. 6.60B6 is the current beta.

[nbwul62]

Please allow me to step in - just for your info:

Using v6.55 b3334, Windows 7 x64, 8GB RAM
-NO- SSD's just some old fashioned 6-7 years old HDD's
(thinking of a new pc though)


my .nbi
[Performance]
ChunkCacheSize=2000 <-tried this with 1000 but I am afraid it hardly makes any difference
PauseDownload=0
RepairPriority=0
RepairThreads=0
SaveChunksMode=0

400Mbits fiber up/down

See small video I just made.
Obviously the speed is fluctuating a bit, but generally I am getting the 400Mbits (even slightly higher most of the times)

http://vid528.photobucket.com/albums/dd330/phwul/Newsbin%20Downloadspeed-Video-280215-145641_zpszrbzel0q.mp4
(it ends up with 343Mbits but that was because everything was downloaded)

Guess it must be something else then...?

Just my 2cts, leave it in the hands of Quade - just wanted to say that the chunks 2000 vs 1000, well, it doesn't make a lot of difference.

Maybe antivirus software? With me, a while ago, I was still using Kaspersky. It broke down my speed. I have been testing, trying,
communicating with experts for half a year. Speeds were dramatically below what it should be, sometimes just half the speed and very
strongly jumping up and down, jumping from 150Mbits to 300Mbits and down.
Friends checked out my speed with their laptops and got a stable speed above what I should get. At one point in time I removed Kaspersky
and replaced it with Norton and discovered that my speed was perfect...

[Downloadski]

I use 6.54 and see 537 mbps down, It is mostly around that, not real drops, only when
I have 4000 for Cache settings and see it going back to about 1000 sometimes.

[Dragon_Myst]

nbwul62 and Downloadski:

Thanks for the attempts and the advice.

nbwul62: I've tried that config, and it did't do anything to improve performance, but thanks for the input and the effort.

Downloadski: I was a bit late to the party, but 6.44 is an older version, and I'd prefer to find a solution using current. The effort, however, is much appreciated.

Quade: My Linux install never touches the swap, but it's there, should it ever be needed. Any amount of paging will always degrade performance, as it means that all RAM is being utilized. The page file is, perhaps, the problem. I'm thinking it might be the fact that Windows doesn't like being told what's best for me. Windows likes to think it knows best in every circumstance, for ever user, since it's been programmed that way. I wish it were otherwise, but truth is true.

While I'm not an administration novice, networking is my weakest area, so I was hoping that I might get a little guidance in that area. I just can't put my finger on what the issue might be, but i have a feeling it's something simple that I'm just overlooking. Since I'm hard-wired, I know it isn't packet loss. I am, however, going through a DNS service. Could this be affecting what I am seeing?

- DM

[Quade]

Might be worth trying it on a windows PC then. My suggestions are windows specific. I'd expect it to work fine under Linux but there are more layers to think about. I think trying it on windows to set a baseline performance might be a good idea. Then you could try to figure out why it's so slow under linux. Is this under Wine or a VM?

[Downloadski]

I updated from 6.54 to 6.55 now and same speed still.
Did do many terabytes at this speed.

When my system repairs and downloads full speed I see 5.5 GB ram in use, cache 2500/4000 and 80-90% cpu (also unpacking a iso in the background)
This is a i7-920 which is more than 5 years old with 12 GB ram.