bharry's WebLog

What's the reason to have yet another DLM (Akamai) in first place?

Hi Brian,

I guess I was lucky in that my download finished within the first session. Nevertheless, I certainly wasn't impressed by the experience.

Here's a little background on (my) customer perception of this issue:

*previously*  Damn, that Visual Studio 2005 sure is popular, it is taking ages to download.

*now* WTF is Microsoft thinking, those incompetent $&%^#*. How could they ship a product like this?

See the difference? Slow downloads are annoying to be sure, but shipping crap (doesn't matter that it is third party crap) is inexcusable. (To be perfectly clear, by shipping crap I mean the DLM, not Visual Studio 2008.)

Regards,

Jeroen

"Again I'm sorry and we are working hard to fix it as fast as we can."

Something Microsoft could do *immediately* would be to place all the Akamai-only downloads into MSDN.  Right now, Team Foundation Server is only available through the broken Akamai software.  Copy it to the MSDN subscriber downloads so that people can get it that way.

I have to agree with Gecko and others: considering Microsoft's resources, both download managers (MSDN and Akamai) are an embarrassment.  There are free tools which are far superior.

Guys, a download manager is *not* a complex piece of software.  It is embarrassing that Microsoft has been using the same buggy tool on MSDN for many years now -- and this Akamai "alternative" isn't winning any friends.

So you've moved the downloads back to the MSDN system, which means that I now can't download *anything* from there. I get a message from the Transfer agent thing that says "The response from the website is missing required information". This occurs for multiple client machines for multiple different files.

Is there no way of separating the infrastructure so that VS 2008 is slow, as expected, but at least the rest of the downloads *work*?.

What a farce. Completely consistent with the MSDN subscriber experience though.

Microsoft needs to figure something out about subscriber downloads. You stopped shipping dvd's in the name of convenience and cost cutting.

I needed to downlaod the german version of vista to debug a problem for a customer of mine. I am getting around 15 k/s, the 2.5 gigabyte download is going to take 66 hours. This is costing me 3 days in productivity and charge time and a really unhappy customer.

1000 downloads an hour sounds impressive until you stop and gauge it against the several million MSDN developers who now have no choice but to use the download service.

I have done a clean install of Windows Ultimate 64-bit with IE 7 64-bit. I have no trouble with downloads except from MSDN. I do not appear to beable to get Akamai's download manager to install. I am unable to download anything from MSDN. I do I go about fixing the problem?

Thanks for your help,

John D. Earls

jdearls@msn.com

(972) 747-9018

Please remove tht akamai download plugin, it was good earlier. please remove tht plugin, iam geting server error, so unhappy....

I am not able to install activeX control "akamai DLM" on my vista system. i am using IE7. Does anyone have an alternative for downloading stuff using msdn subscription.

This is still failing, trying to download the Windows 7 Beta, common Microsoft, stop using some 3rd party activx component that isn't up to the job(getting "The server returned an error.Would you like to retry(Yes/No)").

The software is very poor, no diagnostic message as to why there is a server error, details window is pointless. You can/have done better, please restore our confidence!

When I try to install the ActiveX plug-in on IE8 on Windows XP SP3, it causes an application error message.

"---------------------------

iexplore.exe - Application Error

---------------------------

The instruction at "0x07d00068" referenced memory at "0x07d00068". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program

Click on CANCEL to debug the program

---------------------------

OK   Cancel  

---------------------------

"

I've gotten the same thing with 0x06b10068 and others as well, any ideas?

So far we have not been able to consistently reproduce the issue - if we see more similar issues reported and can repro the problem we will continue to look at the root cause.

I'm trying to download Windows 7 RC, on XP SP3 and IE 8 - I get the blue bar at the top of the page "This site needs to install the ActiveX blah blah" message, then IE hangs, with a DrWatson and dumprep process locking it all up.  Kill them off and IE closes and the PC's back to normal.

Can Windows 7 be downloaded another way? Or can the Akamai DLM be installed another way?

Same problem for us on XP SP3 IE8.  The yellow stripe comes up to install Akamai plug-in  but before you get the chance to click the bar an error occurs and the page expires.

Funny thing is I got the 64 bit version of Windows 7 the other day on the exact same machine but now we can't get the 32-bit version.

YELLOW BAR: The download wants to install the following add-on: 'Download Manager' from 'Akamai Technologies Inc'....

ERROR DIALOG: The instruction at "0x08d30068" referenced memry at "0x08d30068". The memory could not be "written".

What next? We're not left with much choice here, we can't go Vista, so unless we get remedy real quick... without frustration, we'll move forward with Ubuntu.  It's easily accessible and installs without any issues.

Jason -

I'm sorry for the delayed response. I am in touch with the team who supports this and they have been unable to reproduce your issue. If you happen to notice this and want to troubleshoot it further with us please feel free to email me using the contact form on my blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel).

The problem with the dratted Akamai download manager is it's not DEP compatible. After a while I discovered this.

Microsoft need to fix the damn .ocx control.

If you go into IE7/IE8 and uncheck:

"Enable memory protection to help mitigate against online attacks", close IE7/IE8

and reopen IE7/8 then try the download again, it will work OK.

The simple problem is the .ocx is not DEP compatible. Please fix this Microsoft!

My guess is it's written with an early version of ATL which is not compatible with IE7/8's DEP.

Mike

I’ve read through this post/comments (dating back 2 years) and the “swarm of complaints” you mentioned on Google too. I have a much better sense now for how painful this issue has been for you and other subscribers. I’d like to give you and others a quick update on where we stand on this.

First, we only use the Akamai download manager when absolutely necessary, during very high demand. For example, during the Windows 7 RTM launch we used it to supplement bandwidth for only 8 hours. Our capacity has increased significantly since this post originated and you should see our use of ADM diminish even more in the future.

Second, I also realize that our own download manager (FTM) and download speeds are also serious pain points for subscribers and we’re continuing to evaluate how we can improve both moving forward.

Andrew Brenner

Subscriptions PM

As of the posting of this comment, the problems persist.

1) searched the internet, found *old* comments about how the AKM DLM might be the cure. Well that was wrong because it won't install, there are no instructions as to what settings are required to install it, and there is no manual install. Take note that most MSDN subscribers could probably handle a manual install. As it was, I had to make guesses just to get FTM to install. If the security settings in IE were actually documented as to their effect, this would have been easier.

2) download speeds using the MS FTM are pathetic.

3) AKM dns is sending North American users to ASIA. This is really bad, and notification has been sent upstairs.

4) plain old http would be loads faster

5) if FTM depends on the winhttp component and cousins, forget it. I had to write a replacement for it in another project because of it's shortcomings. The project lead for that thing has *always* maintained that it could not possibly be the component. He is wrong.

What it all boils down to is that you need *1* person who understands how to make this all work. The right person would have had it solved in 3 months at the outside. Not a manager, a real code toad with heavy duty networking experience.