Bruce's Blog

A few days ago I sent Red Hat Network support a complaint about download speeds for the x86_64 cd images for the newly released version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. On the same machine with the same copy of wget I was getting 1 to 2 MB a second downloads for the x86 cd images while the x86_64 cd image downloaded at anywhere from 2 to 10 KB a second.

This was the response I just got back:

Thank you for contacting Red Hat Customer Service and we apologise for any delay in responding. There is no major reason why some download quicker than others, but the x86 is 32-bit, wherewas the x86-64 is a 64-bit so that will take longer to download. Also it can depend how busy the Red Hat Network is at the time, how many others are downloading the same product etc.

Yes... because that extra 32-bits makes it harder for the pipe to swallow it all! Sigh.

If I had to guess I'd say they don't have enough servers with access to sufficient bandwidth providing the x86_64 version and I'm being throttled because I'm an academic user. Just my theory.