My server downloads very fast at first then drops to slow

Ok here is my situation. My website hosted on my server runs a script that involves downloading the FLV files from youtube. The download will start at around 4 M/s but then drops quickly to 189 kbps.

The server is capable of downloading files at 11 M/s I have just tested, so this seems to be a youtube thing.

I also experience pretty much the same thing when I download a FLV from youtube on my local windows PC in firefox, if I pause and keep resuming the download, it goes much faster than just leaving it since it always slows down.

My question is…what would be the solution for this?

  1. Upgrade my server download/upload speed

  2. Find a download accelerator that can break the file into parts and download separately? (multithreading?)

  3. Use an alternative to wget? what would be better?

  4. modify the script somehow?

Looking for any suggestions!

Yeah, it’s a limitation on Youtube’s end. It protects from bandwidth sucking. The theory behind this is when a visitor to their site loads a video, it gives a quick boost to get the video loaded and buffered a bit then slows down the rest as your browser plays from the buffer.

You said that the same thing occurs in desktop too… So, the issue is not yours. Youtube itself limits the download speed. So, download accelerators, wget or alternate, increasing the backbone connect speed will not help. Youtube might limit the speed based on IP address. If that is NOT the case, multi-threaded programs can be download files simultaneously… so you the reduce download speed shall be compensated… but it is likely, youtube might limit the bandwidth usage based on IP.

So, the only obvious alternate is to develop php program which makes use of multiple paid proxies to download the videos. But this could be possible violation of youtube’s usage policy; please check that out.