Starts downloads then grinds to a halt...

[Jerry Cornelius]

Generally I'm very pleased with my NTL broadband service, however over the last couple of days I've found that files I've been downloading (nearly all of them podcasts of about 12-14Mb) start fine but then come to an abrubt halt at about 8 Mb. Somtimes restarting the download solves the problem but mostly it doesn't. I've experienced this both with BBC MP3 files and files from the US.

Any thoughts on this would be very welcome.

[homealone]

I've never come across this, myself, anyone?

[Paul K]

Generally I'm very pleased with my NTL broadband service, however over the last couple of days I've found that files I've been downloading (nearly all of them podcasts of about 12-14Mb) start fine but then come to an abrubt halt at about 8 Mb. Somtimes restarting the download solves the problem but mostly it doesn't. I've experienced this both with BBC MP3 files and files from the US.

Any thoughts on this would be very welcome.
Are you running a firewall at all? It could be that the server that is sending the data is losing contact with your pc or isn't getting a reply back from you when it is expecting?

[jaycee]

From what I understand with "podcasts", they are RSS streams sent via HTTP. My guess is this is a problem with the transparent webcache in your area. Try manually specifying a web proxy from the list at:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html#ntl

[Jerry Cornelius]

Thanks for the advice folks - I'm at work but will try those ideas later. I am running a firewall but it hasn't caused a similar problem before. The files are just staight MP3 downloads from the sites in questions - although podcasts can be picked via RSS feeds that's not how I'm accessing them.