question

tldr;

• Our apologies to all who have recently experienced slow downloads from our site.
• Speeds are great in some areas and slow in others, at the same time. We think it could be peering issues or some other network/Internet level issue.
• We've started developing a content delivery network to solve the problem and get content to you faster. The first step in that direction is complete, so please try downloading and let us know your download speed has improved.

For @Matvey M, @Axel Kohonen, and others who have recently had downloads slow down to KB levels.

The frustrating thing has been that we have not been able to duplicate the slow speeds. Some users experienced a poor download speed while at the same time someone else in another location was still getting double digit MB download speeds.

My best guess at this point is a peering issue. Internet service providers enter into peering agreements wherein they agree to send data across each other's networks for zero or low costs, at least when the amount of traffic sent by both networks is roughly equal. However, if one of the networks sends much more data than the other network, the lower sender may decide that the relationship is not beneficial and charge money to send the other ISP's data, or throttle the speed. As nearly as I can tell, this is probably the case.

This morning using a VPN I was able to test download speeds from multiple countries. Some countries give me double digit MB download speeds, while others stay in the KB, even though in all cases my VPN endpoint is hosted in a datacenter with a fast Internet connection. I can only assume that peering arrangements are causing the problem, since obviously our server is working properly from one location, but slower from another. This has not been the case in the past, but I suppose even if it went away it could happen again.

The solution here is for us to change hosting providers, though there is no guarantee there wouldn't be future conflicts there, or to provide our downloads on a content delivery network. I've started implementing the latter. As of right now, our downloads are coming from a new download server, files.flexsim.com, with the original account.flexsim.com as a fallback. Eventually I'd like to add more servers around the world and allow the individual user's browser to determine the best download server based on their location. That will be in the works in the future, but for now at least we have the two file servers.

If @Matvey M, @Axel Kohonen or others have a moment, I'd love if you could test download speeds once again. Hopefully you'll get multiple MB download speeds, and in the future as we get file servers in Europe and other locations, perhaps users worldwide will have a much faster download experience.

Thanks for your patience, and I look forward to any feedback.