In Reply to: RE: Downloads are "better, faster, cheaper". posted by steveassante@comcast.net on June 20, 2012 at 08:25:42:
Even with broadband, downloads are very slow compared to the speed of modern computers, so there is little effect of a download on other system activities (except possibly audiophile playback). So in general local activities and downloads don't interfere with each other.
It is a different situation with respect to network I/O, so if you are doing multiple network activities at the same time as a download there will be interference. The effect on the download is to slow it down temporarily, and this won't matter for sporadic networking activities such as sending and receiving emails and web surfing. However, if you are doing more extensive networking functions such as watching videos, voice telephony (e.g. Skype) they may be degraded, in which case it is best to avoid these until the download is over. (There may be interference even if separate computers are involved if they share a router.) Home routers are not designed to handle multiple networking streams at very heavy load. One can avoid these problems by purchasing an expensive enterprise grade router, I suppose. The best solution is to upgrade to a higher speed Internet service. I routinely listen to music, download new music, and upload and download gigabyte files without interference using a DSL service that has a download speed of 12 Mbps and a (pathetic) upload speed of 1 Mbps and the "free" router that came with the DSL service.
If you have a large number of downloads that need to run at the same time it may be useful to use a download manager. These programs will queue multiple downloads and do them sequentially (e.g. one or two at a time). They also allow you to limit the speed of any downloading so that it won't choke other network usage. If you have an unreliable Internet service these allow resuming a partially completed download as well as allowing you to suspend all downloading and resume at a later time. I have used a program called "Free Download Manger" but I generally don't use it. Some music download sites come with their own download manager program and these are convenient.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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- Management of Downloading - Tony Lauck 10:11:24 06/20/12 (0)