Sometimes get super-slow download rates from Google Cloud Storage, severely impacting workflow

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Jason Spangler

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Mar 3, 2016, 12:59:13 PM3/3/16
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Summary:

Sometimes our internal users get super-slow download rates from Google Cloud Storage, severely impacting our workflow.   Is there a problem that needs fixed?

Details:

We upload ~4GB files to Google Cloud Storage daily (standard buckets) as part of our workflow, and our distributed team downloads them so we can all test together.

Usually we get great download speeds from Google Cloud Storage - I think ~10-25 megabytes per second is common.

However, sometimes (and becoming more frequent) our users get only ~500 kilobytes per second downloads, severely impacting our workflow and delaying our testing for hours/until the next day.  It seems random, but seems to happen to most or all of our users for the same file.

Is there a problem that needs fixed?  Some diagnosis that can be done?

Thanks!
-Jason

Kamran (Google Cloud Support)

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Mar 3, 2016, 11:26:30 PM3/3/16
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Hello Jason,

How do your internal users download the files from Google Cloud Storage? There are different methods of downloading files from GCS: gsutil command tool , Sharing and accessing files publicly through web browsers, downloading files using Developers Console, using Cloud Storage API through your code or program, etc.

You mentioned this issue happens for all of your users for the same file. When this issue happens, is the download performance good for the other files?

I'd recommend trying to download the same file that you have issue with, through web browser and gsutil tool and compare the results. You can also use perfdiag command to run performance diagnostic tests for a given bucket. 

Sincerely,

Jason Spangler

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Mar 4, 2016, 10:02:53 AM3/4/16
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It doesn't happen for all of our users on the same file - for example, yesterday most (but not all) US users downloaded very slowly but our EU user (a single one) and some US users downloaded the same file very fast - all at the same time.

The file is being downloaded via a Signed URL by an Electron-based app by both sets of users:
https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control#Signed-URLs
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George

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Mar 8, 2016, 11:11:01 AM3/8/16
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Hello Jason,

As Kamran suggested in the previous message, is it possible to try the download of the file using gsutil and perfdiag so you can have some performance diagnostic for a given bucket?

Sincerely,
George


On Friday, March 4, 2016 at 10:02:53 AM UTC-5, Jason Spangler wrote:
It doesn't happen for all of our users on the same file - for example, yesterday most (but not all) US users downloaded very slowly but our EU user (a single one) and some US users downloaded the same file very fast - all at the same time.

The file is being downloaded via a Signed URL by an Electron-based app by both sets of users:
https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control#Signed-URLs

On 3/3/2016 10:26 PM, 'Kamran (Google Cloud Support)' via gce-discussion wrote:

Hello Jason,

How do your internal users download the files from Google Cloud Storage? There are different methods of downloading files from GCS: gsutil command tool , Sharing and accessing files publicly through web browsers, downloading files using Developers Console, using Cloud Storage API through your code or program, etc.

You mentioned this issue happens for all of your users for the same file. When this issue happens, is the download performance good for the other files?

I'd recommend trying to download the same file that you have issue with, through web browser and gsutil tool and compare the results. You can also use perfdiag command to run performance diagnostic tests for a given bucket. 

Sincerely,


On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 12:59:13 PM UTC-5, Jason Spangler wrote:
Summary:

Sometimes our internal users get super-slow download rates from Google Cloud Storage, severely impacting our workflow.   Is there a problem that needs fixed?

Details:

We upload ~4GB files to Google Cloud Storage daily (standard buckets) as part of our workflow, and our distributed team downloads them so we can all test together.

Usually we get great download speeds from Google Cloud Storage - I think ~10-25 megabytes per second is common.

However, sometimes (and becoming more frequent) our users get only ~500 kilobytes per second downloads, severely impacting our workflow and delaying our testing for hours/until the next day.  It seems random, but seems to happen to most or all of our users for the same file.

Is there a problem that needs fixed?  Some diagnosis that can be done?

Thanks!
-Jason
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Jason Spangler

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Mar 10, 2016, 4:03:58 PM3/10/16
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Two different perfdiag sessions are at:
http://pastebin.com/3a4BcTQj
http://pastebin.com/XCBjgxNH

(Used pastebin since unsure if group accepts email attachments)
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Jason Spangler

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Mar 11, 2016, 12:18:03 PM3/11/16
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And a third perfdiag.json - from a user on Google Fiber.

George

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Mar 15, 2016, 10:57:34 AM3/15/16
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Hello Jason,

Thank you for the provided information. We are currently looking into the issue and will get back to you as soon as we have more information.

Sincerely,
George

Kamran (Google Cloud Support)

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Mar 18, 2016, 12:10:31 AM3/18/16
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Hi Jason,


The diagnostic data you provided do not show any errors or data transfer issue. Since you mentioned that this is an intermittent problem that happens to some of your users, please try to run the diagnostic tool on a machine which is experiencing the issue. You can send the diagnostic data to me privately. I recommend using -s flag along with the gsutil perfdiag command to specify a larger object size (for example testing with size larger than 100MB). This will let the performance diagnostic tool to run for a longer period of time and catch the transfer errors that might happen during the transfer. However, I also suggest performing some network performance tests on your own network as well to isolate the cause and hopefully to identify the source of issue.


Sincerely,

Jason Spangler

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Mar 24, 2016, 7:00:09 PM3/24/16
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Here is a larger test (~1GB via -s flag): http://pastebin.com/40t23VrX

Notice the "bytes_per_second" of 951769 - less than 1MB/sec transfer rate, which is far too slow (and much slower than the 20-50MB/sec we usually get).


On 3/17/2016 11:10 PM, 'Kamran (Google Cloud Support)' via gce-discussion wrote:

Hi Jason,

The diagnostic data you provided do not show any errors or data transfer issue. Since you mentioned that this is an intermittent problem, please try to run the diagnostic tool on a machine which is experiencing the issue. You can send the diagnostic data to me privately. I recommend using -s flag along with the gsutil perfdiag command to specify a larger object size (for example testing with size larger than 100MB). This will let the performance diagnostic tool to run for a longer period of time and catch the transfer errors that might happen during the transfer. However, I also suggest performing some network performance tests on your own network as well to isolate the cause and hopefully to identify the source of issue.


Sincerely,


run a new  If you still experience the issue, please feel free to send me a
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Kamran (Google Cloud Support)

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Mar 28, 2016, 9:33:27 PM3/28/16
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As the gsutil prefdiag output shows there are lots of TCP segments retransmit during your performance test. This indicates that there is a network problem between your remote computer, where the diagnostic tool had ran and the Cloud Storage's server.

You can use MTR tool to diagnose where a network issue may be happening. Try these commands:

mtr -4 -n -r -c 100 www.googleapis.com

mtr -4 -n -r -c 100 172.217.0.240


Sincerely,


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Jason Spangler

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Apr 29, 2016, 6:13:41 PM4/29/16
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Sorry for slow response.

Here is output from mtr while clients on Austin's Time Warner Cable network were getting only .75 to 3 MB/sec download speeds from Google Cloud Storage.   One client on Google Fiber in Austin was getting ~ 20MB/s download at the same time.

Output from a Linux machine on the same network as the downloading Windows machine:

# mtr -4 -n -r -c 100 www.googleapis.com
Start: Fri Apr 29 16:50:26 2016
HOST: linus                       Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 70.117.96.1                0.0%   100   18.9  18.1   5.7 163.9  21.8
  2.|-- 24.27.12.133               0.0%   100   19.0  79.2  15.9 568.3 132.0
  3.|-- 24.175.43.211              0.0%   100   14.3  14.1   5.7  36.4   4.4
  4.|-- 24.175.41.50               0.0%   100   24.6  22.7  12.0  56.8   6.6
  5.|-- 66.109.6.88                0.0%   100   22.3  21.8  12.2  34.2   4.7
  6.|-- 107.14.17.236              0.0%   100   14.3  18.4   9.7  44.8   4.8
  7.|-- 66.110.57.97               0.0%   100   44.3  33.5  26.0  50.1   4.5
  8.|-- 74.125.50.214              1.0%   100   28.3  32.7  23.7  48.9   4.7
  9.|-- 108.170.240.193            1.0%   100   29.6  33.0  27.1  50.3   4.0
 10.|-- 209.85.242.55              0.0%   100   30.0  33.3  24.2  58.0   6.0
 11.|-- 216.58.194.42              2.0%   100   34.5  32.5  27.0  43.9   3.2

# mtr -4 -n -r -c 100 172.217.0.240
Start: Fri Apr 29 16:52:22 2016
HOST: linus                       Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 70.117.96.1                0.0%   100    7.7  16.3   4.6 105.9  12.7
  2.|-- 24.27.12.133               0.0%   100   28.0  81.2  19.2 636.9 137.4
  3.|-- 24.175.43.211              0.0%   100   12.6  13.0   3.7  31.5   4.0
  4.|-- 24.175.41.50               0.0%   100   20.1  21.7  11.1  41.5   5.7
  5.|-- 66.109.6.88                0.0%   100   22.0  21.8  12.9  35.5   4.6
  6.|-- 107.14.17.232              0.0%   100   15.1  36.5  10.8 123.2  20.2
  7.|-- 66.110.57.97               0.0%   100   34.0  33.0  24.5  61.9   5.1
  8.|-- 74.125.50.212              2.0%   100   41.1  33.2  24.9  50.9   5.2
  9.|-- 108.170.240.130            2.0%   100   29.4  33.6  26.4  63.9   5.5
 10.|-- 209.85.254.111             1.0%   100   34.9  33.5  24.0  55.4   4.7
 11.|-- 172.217.0.240              0.0%   100   31.9  32.4  23.6  44.2   3.7

Output from WinMTR on the actual machine downloading:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                  
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                     linus.spangler.masq -    0 |  115 |  115 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|       cpe-70-117-96-1.austin.res.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |    7 |   16 |  122 |   19 |
|      tge0-0-13.ausgtxlg01h.texas.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |   15 |   74 |  589 |   18 |
|          agg22.ausutxla01r.texas.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |    6 |   12 |   18 |   12 |
|          agg39.dllatxl301r.texas.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |   10 |   19 |   29 |   17 |
|bu-ether14.dllstx976iw-bcr00.tbone.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |   13 |   20 |   38 |   21 |
|            0.ae2.pr1.dfw10.tbone.rr.com -    0 |  115 |  115 |   13 |   18 |   73 |   14 |
| ix-ae-23-0.tcore2.DT8-Dallas.as6453.net -    0 |  115 |  115 |   24 |   31 |   53 |   28 |
|                           74.125.50.214 -    0 |  115 |  115 |   25 |   31 |   56 |   29 |
|                         108.170.240.193 -    2 |  107 |  105 |   22 |   32 |   53 |   31 |
|                           209.85.242.55 -    6 |   95 |   90 |   25 |   31 |   48 |   31 |
|               dfw25s12-in-f10.1e100.net -    5 |   99 |   95 |   23 |   31 |   40 |   31 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                     linus.spangler.masq -    0 |  184 |  184 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|       cpe-70-117-96-1.austin.res.rr.com -    1 |  181 |  180 |    7 |   16 |  122 |   11 |
|      tge0-0-13.ausgtxlg01h.texas.rr.com -    0 |  184 |  184 |   11 |   67 |  570 |   31 |
|          agg22.ausutxla01r.texas.rr.com -    0 |  184 |  184 |    4 |   12 |   42 |    4 |
|          agg39.dllatxl301r.texas.rr.com -    0 |  184 |  184 |   12 |   20 |   36 |   20 |
|bu-ether14.dllstx976iw-bcr00.tbone.rr.com -    0 |  184 |  184 |   13 |   21 |   35 |   17 |
|            0.ae0.pr1.dfw10.tbone.rr.com -    0 |  184 |  184 |   10 |   18 |   60 |   13 |
| ix-ae-23-0.tcore2.DT8-Dallas.as6453.net -    1 |  181 |  180 |   23 |   31 |   60 |   26 |
|                           74.125.50.212 -    2 |  176 |  174 |   24 |   32 |   50 |   33 |
|                         108.170.240.130 -    1 |  180 |  179 |   24 |   31 |   58 |   30 |
|                          209.85.254.111 -    0 |  184 |  184 |   18 |   31 |   39 |   29 |
|               dfw06s38-in-f16.1e100.net -    1 |  181 |  180 |   23 |   31 |   62 |   31 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
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