That's probably the most plausible theory I've heard so far. I may have missed them saying that.

If Fastly is indeed their fallback CDN, then it would also explain why it doesn't perform as well as the Akamai CDN. And yeah maybe they figured they leave the browser downloads there (for now?) to share the load a bit.

By the way when the CDN crash happened, did it affect all downloads, also Galaxy? (I recall reading it did, but not sure...)

I asked about that in the lgogdownloader discussion, ie. what exactly does it mean in practice that it "uses the Galaxy API". Too bad i removed Linux from my main gaming laptop (just to free some space for Windows 11 for now as I was running out of space on the Windows 11 drive), but I guess I could test it on another Linux laptop.

It appears there are ways to get lgogdownloader work on Windows too, either compiling it in Windows yourself or a container that can work in Windows too:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lgogdownloader_gogdownloader_for_linux/post1421

The reason I like gogrepoc is specifically that it seems to run ok on any system which can run python: e.g. Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi etc. lgogdownloader seems to be a bit harder to get running on Windows, its target system seems to be Linux.

Yep, plenty from what I have read, but they are probably mostly on the eastern side of AUS, and I am not.

There was that dude recently who was complaining they only got half their gigabyte connection speed, which is a hell of lot more than what I and many others get.

ISPs in AUS don't give us much upload speed. In fact it is pretty lousy at only 17 Megabits (yes you read that right, 2 Megabytes a second roughly) for all the plans I can get. Plans available for some other folk can be a bit better, but you pay a lot and don't get much.

There is definitely some throttling going on, and it has only been since that CDN crash last year. I now have a 100 Megabit connection, but barely get above 1 Megabyte a second (i.e maybe 10 Megabits), whereas it used to be 5+ Megabytes a second (40+ Megabits) for most of my time with GOG.

This slow issue isn't limited to others, as plenty of Americans and Europeans have been complaining too. It isn't limited to just a few of us in AUS.

I used the original gorepo.py for a while, and it worked reasonably well, but I could never get gogrepoc.py to work well enough. On consultation with Kalanyr, we figured the issue was likely related to my OS (32 Bit Win 7).

Not much later, gogcli.exe came along, and as I prefer not to use Python, and also build my manifest in stages, I swapped to that. But alas gogcli.exe is only single thread downloads, hence why I now use a combo of curl and either aria2 or fdm5 to get multiple threads.

With multiple threads I can get around the 5 Megabyte speed I used to get with GOG.

Recently I started downloading game updates from GOG, that I'd been ignoring for far too long due to the lousy speed I was getting with GOG.

I'd use Galaxy if they provided a Lite version or more importantly a command-line version, that I could create a frontend for. I'd still need to use gogcli.exe to get the manifest data, but that's okay.

I wonder if someone could provide me with a full download path using static.akamaitechnologies.com, as it might be possible to do a substitution in the fastly path? Providing the authorization is the same.

EDIT
Checking the command-line options for lgogdownloader I saw the following, which would seem to imply more than just Akamai..

..

I know the difference between megabits and megabytes. 400Mbps = 40MB/sec. 50MB/sec would be 500Mbps. You're slightly off with your calculation.

My plans is NBN Ultra-Fast 1000Mbps/50Mbps Unlimited

1000Mbps = 1 Gigabit which is 1000MB. Whatever the megabits (Mbps) is just divide by ten. That's how you get the speed. So 1000/10 = 100. I am getting half of what I should be. On Steam I get 80MB+/sec. More often than not its 90MB/sec+

Of course I expect to get the speed I'm paying for. Otherwise why would I pay it?

Its the equivalent of buying a car that claims the top speed is 250km and it only goes 125km. You wouldn't be happy with that would you?

I rarely use GoG anyway. But its poor customer service to limit speeds. I am sick of companies always spouting about customer service is the most important thing. Then this sort of thing happens.
I got an email from them to backup my cloud saves. They are limiting everyone to 200MB per game. How can any games company have storage issues?

I backup my saves manually anyway. So I don't need their cloud service. My plan is NBN Ultra-Fast 1000Mbps/50Mbps Unlimited. 50MB/sec is appalling. Do you even know what Gigabit is?

Imagine expecting to get the speeds that you pay for. And then someone saying that expectation is insane. That is wild.

Of course I'm using Galaxy. How you going to download a game via a browser? That makes no sense.

I do understand how it works. That is why I'm annoyed. The sports car analogy is not the same and you know it. If I bought a sports car that didn't perform as advertised I would return it for a refund. That will make them pay attention. Or I'd sue them for fraud.

How do I check which server I'm connected to? And how do I change it? How do I connect to the offline installers?

Offline installer? Once the game is downloaded its installed? Why would I need a offline installer?
Because it is achievable. And I've achieved it multiple times. I know because speedtest.net shows that is what I am connecting at.

On Steam and everywhere else I get close to 100MB/sec. GoG is the only service where I get half that. Where I can't achieve 100MB/sec.

Yea that dude is me. GoG is the only service where I get half the speed I'm supposed to get. I know there are various factors that limit speed. But I am guaranteed at least 600Mbps. 50MB/sec is below that. Its not my ISPs fault. They don't throttle. Why would they? I am paying a premium price to be in the fast lane.

My upload speed is 50Mbps which = 5MB/sec. I actually get about 4.7MB/sec (47Mbps) which is better than I had before.

Its a gigabit connection not a gigabyte. Because if it was that would be a terabit connection. Which would actually be 1GB/sec.

Can someone please tell me what the letters CDN stand for? I still don't understand what that is.

.

Mate, I was trying to be kind to you and helpful.
And no, you have shown you don't really understand.

Incorrect, there are 8 Bits in a Byte.
So you divide megabits by 8 to get the megabytes.

Nope, divide your 1000 Megabits by 8 to get your Megabytes.
So LOL you are even worse off, as it would be 125 Megabytes.
That said, no-one ever gets their full quota, so it would likely be somewhere around 115 Megabytes at best.

Your ISP can quote whatever they like, but they don't control many aspects of the web, and that is where things can differ greatly.

If you download from somewhere that has a great connection like yourself, and don't get routed through other connections that are slower, then yes you can achieve what you paid for or pretty close to it.

Not a good analogy really.
The proper analogy, would be - Yes you have a fast car and it can go really fast, but laws limit your speed and so you can never realize your top speeds ... not legally.

So between you and GOG are many web connections, in various countries, all of which have their own limits, and they are the controlling factor.

The only way around that, would be to use a known good route or for GOG to store their game files on a server near you, that you have a good connection to.

Well, it all boils down to cost, as always, and how well a company is doing. So if they are feeling the need to cut costs, because maybe they have grown too big too quickly or just aren't making enough money, then expect reductions in service.

I am not saying it is right, but there is the real world conditions we all have to face.

Bud, you have no idea.
Until a few years ago, Galaxy did not even exist, and many of us still don't use it.

GOG provide two methods to download your games.
(1) Via browser download links in your GOG library web page. These are called Offline Installers.
(2) Via Galaxy ... either as an all-in-one download and install, or as Offline Installers in the Extras section.

Only the Offline Installers are truly DRM-Free, which is what GOG are supposed to be all about.

P.S. Before Galaxy, and for a while after, many of us used the official GOG Downloader program to download our games from GOG. That was very bare bones, and focused mostly on downloading. Many of us were not happy when GOG disabled it.

EDIT
There are also 3rd party programs, that use the browser links etc, and provide features that Galaxy doesn't. These are the likes of gogrepo.py, gogcli.exe and lgogdownloader. You can also use Legendary and it's frontend called Heroic.

No you clearly don't.
That said, GOG are giving a poorer service now than they should be, so I do agree with that bit.

I know there's 8 bits in a byte. And there's also overhead. I have pretty much always got my full quota.

Then they can expect reductions in customers which will lose them more money LOL!

Your download speed does not depend only on what your ISP is providing to you, but also on the servers from which you are downloading, the routing, congestion of the networks etc.

If you think all servers should and will always give you maximum download speed that you can achieve locally, you are incorrect. For instance, if you upgraded your internet line from 1Gbits/s to 10Gbits/s, are you seriously expecting that you would get such download speeds from all servers, Steam and others?

To give you an example. My home internet is 600 Mbits/sec = 75 MBytes/sec (you divide it by 8, not 10, so in your case 1000Mbits/sec is 125 MBytes/sec). Not quite speedy as yours, but still quite speedy.

The other day I needed to download the Linux Mint and Rocky Linux 9 installation medias (ISO files) from the internets, they are both several gigabytes in size. I ended up downloading both from some university servers in Sweden or such that was pretty close to me and was hosting the files, listed in the Linux Mint and Rocky download pages as valid download servers.

Should I have been expecting to get a download speed of over 70 MBytes/sec for both? I got only about 2.4 MBytes/sec download speeds for each of them. To whom should I be complaining that I didn't get max download speeds?

No, it is equivalent of you not being able to drive your car at 250km/h on public roads because there are speed limits on the roads, and/or because it is a dirt road where you can't safely drive that fast.

It is very common to limit the download speeds to some arbitrary speed, just so that they can serve more customers at the same time so that a few are not hogging all the resources.

What that limit should be is another discussion. I haven't tested it recently but last September when I tested the download speeds with GOG Galaxy, I was able to download offline installers with it at about 70MBytes/sec, which is quite close to my theoretical maximum of 75. Downloading and installing a game through Galaxy wasn't quite as fast, maybe it was around 50MBytes/sec. I was actually expecting it to be the opposite, ie. downloading the offline installers would have possibly been slower than downloading/installing a game directly, but I am unsure what are all the things affecting the download (e.g. does the reported download speed differ because offline installers are compressed data while direct download possibly isn't, etc.).

1000 Mbits/sec = 125 MBytes/sec. And no you will not get 125 (or even close) download speeds from all servers all over the world because the only limiting factor is not your internet connection.

Haven't you ever downloaded any files with a browser? It doesn't differ from that.

You can go to https://www.gog.com with your web browser, log into your account (with the browser, not the Galaxy client), and download offline installers with the browser. Then you can run the installer to install a game, without using the Galaxy client at all.

Does it make more sense to you now?

Have you noticed GOG.com harping on being a "DRM-free" store? What does that mean to you, or is it total gibberish to you, you don't know what the term "DRM" or "DRM-free" means in practice?

To many DRM-free is the main reason to buy games on GOG (instead of e.g. Steam or Epic Games Store), and the offline installers are a big part of that DRM-freedom. If the only way to download and install (and possibly also play) your games is through an online client where you have to log into an online account before you can install and/or play the game, then that is not DRM-free.

What it means in practice that if and when your online account perishes, or the whole service is down, or you just don't happen to have an internet connection right now, you will not be able to install nor play your games anymore. With DRM-free games you can, as long as you have downloaded your offline installers beforehand.

For instance, if you have a movie on a physical DVD-disc, you can consider it DRM-free because you can watch it freely, without internet or connecting to some online account before you can watch it. Just insert the DVD into your DVD-player and watch it.

If you watch the same movie on e.g. Netflix online, that is not DRM-free because you depend on the existence of the Netflix online service to see the movie, and that you have internet available (You could argue that it is the "streaming" and not really "DRM" that is causing that restriction with Netflix, but a streaming service causes pretty much similar restrictions on the usage of a product as online DRM, and even more so, e.g. requirements for the internet speed.

I know about the routing, congestion, etc. I am paying for not only the speed but for less routes to be taken ensuring that I get as close as possible to the speed advertised. Because if that doesn't happen 99% of the time I will cancel the service and go to an ISP that does provide as close to the speed as possible that was advertised.
I don't expect 100% speed 100% of the time. But I do expect it to be at least 70% of the speed advertised 99% of the time. Otherwise its false advertising and fraud. And I will take action accordingly. Why would I use a service (in this case GoG) that is literally over 50% slower speed than I should be getting?
If a server I am downloading from isn't capable of giving the speed I am supposed to receive I will not deal with that company (in this case GoG) because time is precious. The entire reason I got gigabit speed is so that I can download and install games faster.



You should. Because you are getting ripped off. To the ISP for failing to deliver the speed advertised. They control your initial route from your location to the rest of the world. Its part of their job to ensure that you get as close to the speed as possible the majority of the time. It is their job to ensure that the least amounts of routes are taken to the destination server.

Speed limits don't actually physically stop you from driving a car at its top speed.




I know GoG is DRM free. I know all about DRM. I have been dealing with DRM since the SafeDisc and SecuROM days. I hate it. I hate Denuvo and any DRM.
They think they are so clever making anti-tamper technology. I wonder what they'll do when it costs them more to implement DRM like Denuvo than they make from sales of a game lol. Then we'll see them scurry like the rats they are.

Good luck with that I guess. From my point of view your expectations are unrealistic.

If you upgraded your internet to 10Gbit/s, would you still expect to get 70% of that (ie. 7Gbit/s) 99% of the time, no matter what and where you are downloading?

In that case, it had nothing to do with my ISP.

I still think you don't understand even though you claim the opposite. Downloading Rocky Linux 9 and Linux Mint ISO files from Sweden (which is close to where I live) at 2.4 MBytes/sec... the culprit is clearly that Swedish university server which simply doesn't upload the files faster than that.

It has nothing to do with the fact my ISP has promised me a 75MBytes/sec (600Mbites/sec) internet line, that is not the issue here.

I saw that coming, which is why I also mentioned the dirt roads.

The point was that there are other things limiting the speed at which you can drive, besides the technical specs of your car.

Similarly like what your ISP offers to you as your max download speed does not mean you will 99% time get even 70% of that, necessarily. There is no such law of nature in place. The bottleneck that limits you lower can be somewhere else.

Why are you expecting "only" 70%? Why not 80%, or 99%?

Ok, so now you understand how and why you can download offline installers from GOG servers with a web browser as well? Using the Galaxy client to download, install and play your games is optional, not required. (Then again even if the client was needed for the download, but not installation and running the game, I would still consider it DRM-free... but the ability to download also with a mere web browser is an additional benefit that GOG offers).