Right now I'm seeing that image downloads on wikimedia commons have
slowed down by a factor of ten or so since the last weekend. I used to
download about 700 images an hour, so it's possible that my bandwidth
is being throttled, but it might be something affecting other people too.
Something I notice is that sometimes I can download a file very quickly:
[paul@haruhi ~]$ curl -O
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Barabinsk_station1.jpg
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 807k 100 807k 0 0 797k 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 --:--:-- 863k
----------------
Then sometimes the download takes orders of magnitude longer:
[paul@haruhi ~]$ curl -O
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Barabinsk_station1.jpg
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 807k 100 807k 0 0 16431 0 0:00:50 0:00:50 --:--:-- 14436
----------------
I'm wondering if there's some specific problem here, if I'm being
throttled, or if there's just a general need for more bandwidth &
servers. In any case I'd be pretty happy to make a donation that would
cover any operational costs that my activities incur and then some.
