N4L - Downloading of Microsoft ISO's

[Tim Kong]

Afternoon all, 

As referenced in the N4L provisioning thread some schools have been experiencing a slowdown in the downloading of ISO’s from Microsoft’s servers.

Firstly, please contact the N4L Helpdesk on 0800 LEARNING (532 764) if you are experiencing any issues with your Managed Network connection. If the Helpdesk are unable to resolve, they will escalate to an engineer. By contacting the Helpdesk, we are able to record the case, and ensure that is tracked and the appropriate people can respond, using the best channels to do so.

With regards to this specific issue, when downloading Microsoft ISOs, N4L recommends following Microsoft's preferred method which is using the supplied download manager for Volume License Service Center downloads, and using your browser's built in download manager for MSDN downloads.

N4L are also actively working with Microsoft to establish optimal connectivity paths to the services offered to schools. Microsoft have begun the process to migrate services to Australia which will dramatically improve the latency to these services.

Office365 migration time frames and FAQ's can be found at these sites

Timeframes: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn878163.aspx

FAQ: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn879432.aspx

Before your datacentre move: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn879433.aspx

It is understood that Microsoft are provisioning all new Schools to Office 365 in Australia however existing Office 365 schools are planned to be migrated in September. Please see their FAQ for further information.

Regards,

Tim Kong 

School Training Lead, The Network for Learning Ltd

D: 04 333 0017 ext 714 | M: +64 21 835 664 | W: www.n4l.co.nz 

A: Level 9, Bayleys Building, 36 Brandon Street, Wellington Central, Wellington 6011
P: PO Box 11487, Manners Street, Wellington 6142

[Patrick Dunford]

Later versions of IE have their own integrated download manager which is used with VLSC instead of an external component.

 

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Patrick Dunford
System Administrator
IDSGT Ltd
itsu...@hillview.school.nz
Ext 224 / 027 601 7163

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[Craig Knights]

Not slow but dropping out completely.  I have been in contact with n4l and their engineers. ..  Good response as usual.

Craig

[Mike Etheridge]

What's IE?   !-)

On 22/05/2015 7:26 PM, "Patrick Dunford" <kahuk...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Alistair Baird]

Incredibly Evil

[Simon - OBHS]

Just did a test download the sever 2012 iso which is 5GB. Our connection is 500Mb and we manage our own firewalling/filtering.

At best i saw about 3.2M per sec lowest about 300kb, averaging about 1mb. i cancelled the download about 20 min in.

This was a straight download through chrome as the download manager is java based i think (from recollection) and chrome no longer supports java or any old school plugins.

Just thought id share.

[gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz]

Doing the same test here; Server 2012 ISO, 500Mbit connection, N4L filtering.
I got 842MB in 5 minutes = 2.8MByte/sec.

The file came from "fullproduct.download.microsoft.com" which is akamai'd; traceroutes are short and sweet:

  5    12 ms    11 ms    11 ms  122-56-99-251.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.251]
  6    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  122-56-99-250.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.250]
  7    24 ms    12 ms    15 ms  122-56-99-253.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.253]
  8    29 ms    27 ms    31 ms  219-88-187-1.ch-akamai.xtra.co.nz [219.88.187.1]
  9    27 ms    27 ms    27 ms  219-88-187-112.ch-akamai.xtra.co.nz [219.88.187.112]
Trace complete.

  5    13 ms    11 ms    42 ms  122-56-99-251.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.251]
  6    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  122-56-99-250.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.250]
  7    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  122-56-99-253.n4l.sparkdigital.co.nz [122.56.99.253]
  8    28 ms    22 ms    29 ms  a219.88.186.1.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com [219.88.186.1]
  9    20 ms    20 ms    20 ms  a219.88.186.91.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com [219.88.186.91]
Trace complete.

The IPs could be multihomed, so hard to determine where they are - but 219.88.0.0/15 are owned by Spark.

- Ben.

[Pete Mundy]

That figure. ie around 3-4MB/sec (maybe ~30 mbit?) is what I see a lot too.

Point in case, the attached screenshot taken just now. 3 simultaneous downloads of the same URL from 3 different 100 mbit fibre links.

The top one, a 100mbit N4L link at a Nelson school, with practically zero else happening (it's 10pm!); approx 3.9MB/sec. The second one is a server on a 100mbit business fibre connection in Auckland (11MB/sec or 88mbit) and the 3rd from a server on a business fibre connection in Christchurch (~8MB/sec ie ~70 mbit/sec). That last one was just to prove it's not the latency of testing from Nelson!

When the screenshot was taken they were all running simultaneously, but I had given the school one a head-start before hand. It never exceeded 4MB/sec. Actually, it never even hit 4MB/sec.

I tried two more N4L schools remotely after taking the screenshot just for giggles too. Both are 100mbit connections; the first gave 3.9MB/sec and the second 3.2MB/sec.

Draw your own conclusions. I just figure it's the 'managed' in 'managed network' :)

Pete

Ps, the test URL I was using - if anyone else wants to try it - is the following:

ftp://mirror.xnet.co.nz/pub/ubuntu-releases/15.04/ubuntu-15.04-desktop-i386.iso

Best speed I've got off it so far is 930Mbit/sec on a business 1gig link (not cached & different ISP).

[Clayton Hubbard]

Hi all.

We are currently looking into this and will come back to the group.

On another note in regards to ISO's, could you please check and confirm that your DNS is pointing to N4L to ensure you get our akamai CDN instead of going direct or to another public CDN off-net

Please don't hesitate to send your results and traceroutes to the locations. If you could include a browser trace "HAR" or similar that will be very useful

Thanks again,
Clayton

[gre...@staff.cbhs.school.nz]

Clayton -
We're using DNS servers 122.56.237.1 and 210.55.111.1 (aka ns1.xtra.co.nz and ns2.xtra.co.nz) as per the N4L cutover spec.
Can you confirm that these are correct in terms of "pointing to N4L"?

cheers,
- Ben.

[Clayton Hubbard]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

Those are the correct servers to use (Primary 122.56.237.1 and Secondary 210.55.111.1)

A number of CDN providers make choices on where content is delivered from based on the DNS resolvers IP. An example would be using public DNS servers which will return the closest public CDN edge servers (this may be in another ISP or directly from the source). When using our DNS servers you will be directed to "private" CDN servers hosted in the network or as close as possible.

There is a significant amount of content shared across public peering exchanges (i.e http://mirror.xnet.co.nz/) and others which is available via our APE connection. You can see the peers by viewing http://ape.nzix.net/peers.html (N4L is AS133420 - http://bgp.he.net/AS133420)

I will provide an update today relating to slow downloads which has been reported here. This has been under investigation by our team. 

Thanks,

Clayton Hubbard 
Senior Engineer, The Network for Learning Ltd

D: 09 972 2906 | M: 022 043 0155 | W: http://www.n4l.co.nz
A: Suite 306, Geyser Building, 100 Parnell Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052
P: PO Box 37118, Parnell, Auckland 1151

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