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Download Speeds from Apache Webserver are randomly slow

I have a problem with my webserver having slow downs in file transfers occasionally (when someone tries to download a .exe or .pdf by clicking a link). When this happens the download speeds will go from 230kbps to 30kps then to 0. The file size can vary from 30MB to 1MB, it doesn't matter. I can't find anything substantial in the apache logs. To fix this, I can map a drive to the server, copy the file to my desktop, and download speeds continue as normal. The server doesn't really get too much traffic so it's not likely that it's being overwhelmed. I don't know if this matters, but this server is a virtual machine. Here are the specs, it is a SuSE Linux 11 server running apache 2.2.10 with 1.5GB memory.

Dave Baldwin

How is your server connected to the internet? Some ISPs seem to implement bandwidth control by progressively slowing down large file transfers.

bill30

Check your firewall settings. You may have a port open only for so long.

chshrmc

ASKER

@DaveBaldwin... the server is connected to the Internet, but our bandwidth isn't really throttled, and some of the downloads should be about 1MB only taking a few seconds. Also this occurs from Internal clients.

@bill30 it is possible that the the firewall settings on the server could be causing the issue. I went into YaST to check, and I haven't been able to find a setting for length of time a port can be open. Any ideas on that?

chshrmc

ASKER

an update on this issue. I don't think it is the firewall causing the problem. This issue started occurring again this morning. I disabled the firewall temporarily and it was still happening.

bill30

Could the VM server be going into some sort of power save mode?

chshrmc

ASKER

@bill30 no... I don't think so other servers are not being effected, and I can be on the server console while this is happening