FTP Download Speed Question

[BulaRae]

I am wondering if anyone can shed some light. I am traveling in Europe right now and finally have decent internet speed in Switzerland. It tests at 20.52 mbps.

Suddenly this morning, however, when I go to download via FTP or even HTTP, I'm only getting speeds of 1.8-7.0. It's just crawling and abysmally slow!!

I figure it's got to be server/FTP related if the ISP service speed tests so fast, and I was getting the fast download speeds the last four days at this location.

Anybody have an explanation and tip?

Thanks

[Gwaihir]

Can be a lot of things. There's a big network between you and the server.

Some tips:
- ping your server. If there's significant packet loss, there's a network problem that needs fixing. (If so, a traceroute can tell you where.)
- does it still test that fast? Perhaps you've had your fill.. Some providers purposefully throttle you back when you've exceeded a certain bandwith useage
- the server might be very busy. Unless it's dedicated, I don't think we can directly tell whether bandwith usage is maxing out, but you can log in to shell and have a look at uptime for some indication of the machines business
- or you're simply sharing the bandwith with more active other users than before somewhere along the way, i.e. are out of luck