JPN Wall Set Archive Corrupt?

[idgarad 0]

 Attempting to download a few mods and the archives seem corrupt:

for example

PEG PPond Culverts

ACB-VLT Terminals & Jets SEries 1 Part 1

Cobb 5th Avenue

Columbus Tower

...

JPN WAlls Set by MAS71 with MML

PEG PondKit-Deluxe

PorkiesProps-Vol1

MAPP Coasters

Somy Microwave Rectenna Plant

Yey hundreds of others work just fine. Tried other browsers too (Google, Firefox, IE, and Opera).

Anyone else run into this?

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

Thoose downloads work perfectly fine. I have used some of them before with no problem.

The problem is most lilkey your download or internet connection. If a internet connection glitches during a download it will corrupt it.

Try re-downloading the files or restteing your internet connection (you can do this by just unplugging it then putting it back in)

[SC4BOY 20]

There are reports of situations like this now and then. The only intelligent thread I've seen on the subject is HERE. You might see if you can find any help in it. Generally there is not a known "fix" for it.. when it happens you just have to fool with it until you can clear it up somehow.

[idgarad 0]

I have narrowed down the problem and found a workaround for those who are affected. There appears to be one of two issues that cause it, one, that the download rate (avereaging 12kbps) stalls and times out. Since the issue is coming from a variety of sources from the USA the choke point might be near the ISP that hosts Simtropolis or possibly the web server itself. The other is a reset packet that gets sent resulting in the download prematurely finishing (e.g. a 6mb file finishes only after 2mb is sent). Without looking at configs or even knowing one platform Simtropolis is running that is the best info I can find.

The solution I found is using GetRight with multi-segmented downloading. By establishing two or more download connections to a single file it appears to keep the connection stable enough where as a single file download stalls and fails. I have no clue why that would be, but the solution is consistent as a fix.

It would appear that download rates are throttled on a per-connection basis since three of us downloaded the same file (I have DSL, the other two have cable) but both got exactly 16k download rates. This throttling may or may not be at Simtropolis (Where is that Net Neutrality bill when I need it...) but could be at any point between users and the server. If that is the case and there is HTB, SFQ, CFQ, etc... like throttling then it is possible that the delay is causing the downloads to disconnect.

Regardless of root cause, using a download manager of some sort, and using the multi-segment download option appears to remedy this. Please note that a multi-segment download will not circumvent the maximum number of concurrent connections to the web server so setting it higher then 2 (say 4 for instance) will likely do nothing more then download it faster at the expense of not being able to connected to the web server to browse, post, etc. Simtropolis appears to have the default setting of 4 concurrent connections and if you use all those up to download faster, you can't navigate the web site till those 4 connections are freed up. An additional bonus to using a download manager is you can queue up a substantial number of pending downloads (between sc4devotion, simpeg, simtropolis, etc.) and schedule them to download during non-peak times for the web server.

GetRight also has a nice feature to store downloaded files sorted by top level domain so I can quickly see where I downloaded files from (i.e. Download\Simtropolis.com\, Downloads\Simpeg.com, etc.)

All is working well now with the files I was having trouble with.

[SC4BOY 20]

I'm glad that solved your particular problem. I don't think it is the only issue, however.