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View Full Version : How many GETs for a single split?



jayheyl
05-16-2013, 04:17 PM
I've had trouble downloading from a particular subscription web site that uses Amazon S3 services for some of their downloads. I've determined the issue is related to the "expires" time encoded into the URL. This is apparently somewhat common with S3. (A little searching took me to instructions for how to make it work from the Amazon end, so I assume there must be at least a few people doing this.)

The problem in this case is the web site appears to be encoding a time out of just 15 minutes. Some of the files they serve up are very large, to the point that my 15Mbps connection can have trouble getting some of them in the allotted time, particularly if I'm downloading something else at the same time.

I was discussing this with a friend who pointed out it would be very stupid to set this up so the whole download would have to finish in that time. He speculated the server would only be checking the time at the beginning of the GET request. IOW, as long as I started a normal download stream within 15 minutes it should go to completion without a problem. What I'm seeing is a download that goes along fine for some amount of time and then fails with a message about the server refusing access.

This brings me to my question. If I tell DownloadStudio to use just one split per connection for a given site, will it do a single GET for the whole file or will it serially issue GETs for ascending segments of the file? If the latter, is there any way to get it to do just one GET for the whole thing?

I attempted to address this issue with the support idiots at the site, but, well, they're idiots who had helpful advice like rebooting my computer, trying a different browser, and, get this, maybe trying a download manager. I pointed out they had a problem, was pretty clear about exactly what it was, and they suggested I reboot my computer. So I'm not expecting anything useful from that front.

Paul
05-16-2013, 05:58 PM
If you set one split, then DownloadStudio will do one GET for the complete download of the file. There will be no segmentation.

You can set a Site Rule in DownloadStudio so that any downloads from this site will use these split (and any other) settings.

jayheyl
05-17-2013, 02:57 PM
Thanks. I experimented tonight and found that limiting the download to one split allows it to complete even if it exceeds the expiration time. It's unfortunate since the site has really bad throughput and multiple splits helped with that, but it's obviously best that the download actually complete.

On the plus side, it looks like maybe somebody with a clue at the site might have read my email as tonight's download had an expiration time of 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes. Still not great but it's an improvement.

Paul
05-17-2013, 03:07 PM
Glad you are able to download the files in a stable manner now.