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The idea behind breaking up a download into multiple segments with different ranges is for increasing download speed. This works if the server has a per connection limit. A server without that limitation theoretically servers the same bytes with one or more connections.

My question is if download managers still speed up downloading from such a server or it's just a useless effort. In other words is there any limitations per TCP socket connection by default or not?

Xaqron
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  • Hi, could you clarify what download manager you're considering? In what language? For what TCP protocol? I have an answer, but want to make sure I understand the scenario. – Mike Pennington Apr 15 '11 at 10:11
  • I'm talking generally. I'm not sure if the concept of download managers is valid for nowadays. – Xaqron Apr 15 '11 at 10:15
  • Part of the reason for using download managers (from the client side) is to support recoverability in the case of a network outage. This is still a problem today, particularly if you're using a GSM connection :) – forsvarir Apr 15 '11 at 10:17
  • That's OK. The question is focused on speed benefits of them. – Xaqron Apr 15 '11 at 10:25

2 Answers2

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No. There are no limitations per socket. Most OS:es will try to share the bandwidth equally between all sockets unless QoS is specified.

jgauffin
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While a server could throttle bandwidth usage per connection, they typically do not bother. If a response is big enough that it could be effectively throttled then it's about the same impact to slower clients if a fast download just completes sooner.

Splitting a download into pieces may actually hurt your client's performance because of the way TCP operates -- it has a "slow start" mechanism that reduces throughput on new connections.

Websites that implement throttling will typically do so between their various virtual hosts (so that the download site doesn't starve out a more interactive one) or will do so based on the remote IP address.

By far the primary benefit of a download manager is that it will simply continue the download if the connection gets broken.

Brian White
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