Hi Folks, Kevin the producer, here.
IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DOWNLOAD AND IT IS TAKING FOREVER, please STOP IT. THEN READ THIS POST.
As Jimmy has said, our apologies for the difficulties. Unfortunately, we have become victims of our own success. Our hosting provider has decided that we were using too much of the “Unlimited Bandwidth” we have been paying for and decided, as of December 30th, to throttle our bandwidth without telling us.
Originally they told us we were using too many CPU cycles, so we moved the show to its own, separate server account, but of course it did no good. Finally last night (Friday) I got a supervisor to admit that they were throttling our bandwidth on purpose. He explained why the decision was made, and I totally understand: We are offering five years of episodes – over 400 to date – most of them an hour or more in length. Also, we have become incredibly popular, especially in the last year, because your support has allowed us to grow and promote. Also, Jimmy found a magic Genie who gave him the ability to live a 30-hour day.
Although we’re still upset about the Double Secret Probation our host subjected us to, we now have a plan to move forward. We are moving all our audio files to a media serving service, Libsyn. I will be gradually moving the files over on a post-by-post basis.
Starting today, the most recent episodes will be available, and I’ll continue to add older and older posts over the next few days. You will know when an episode is ready to access because I will append the word *UPDATE* to that show’s post.
Thanks for the update, Jimmy! Encore Week is always so special, so I am eager to get those new shows. Thank you SO MUCH for these wonderful, life-changing podcasts.
“Unlimited” — ha, ha — unless somebody takes them at their word.
Is Libsyn doesn’t work, I hear Cachefly is a pretty good one. Just in case.
still doesn’t work faster in my podcaster app (using the RSS podcast feed). your episodes are blocking the whole download queue. it can’t be so hard to copy a few files around to a faster provider, can it..
” it can’t be so hard to copy a few files around to a faster provider, can it..”
You’d be surprised.
Remember that while we were trying to copy the files off the server, we were dealing with the same throttling issues everyone else was. They were throttling FTP as well as http.
In the mean time, our backups were not immediately available, either.
If your RSS issues persist past Monday morning, I’d like to know. Technically nothing has changed with our RSS feed, the enclosures are just coming from a different domain (llvlcshow.libsyn.com).
It’s working! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Hope you’re also planning to change your primary hosting provider. No way should they throttle you without telling you and then deny that they were throttling you. It’s your livelihood they’re playing with: time to kick them to the curb.
Thanks everyone! My producer Kevin has endured many sleepless nights this week to get us back up and running. KUDOS to him!
Libsyn can’t find Denise’s episode.
Downloading the updated Chris Masterjohn interview now through iTunes. Averaging 8kB/s, 2 hours remaining.
Fwiw, my connection is being made to box713.bluehost.com – I don’t know if that’s the old or new hosting site.
I opened up a second connection to try and download the updated Robb Wolf interview and my download speed has doubled. It looks like each connection is being limited to an average of 8kB/sec.
Well, both downloads failed while I wasn’t looking and they won’t resume, restart is the only option. Are you guys sure that iTunes is pointing at the new server?
I’m talking to myself now 🙂
I clicked on each file through the website and the downloads are proceeding normally. So, no, iTunes is not being pointed at the new server. 🙂
The last 4 podcasts or so are recorded at a higher bit rate of 192 and averaging 58mb which is wasteful and huge and could be causing the issue. Your older podcasts were 21mb in size and recorded at a bit rate of 64.
I have itunes set to keep your episodes and the stats on my 161 stored podcasts show that 144 of them average 21mb each and the last 4 are much bigger.
Get “disk of light” to convert them and re-post them at the lower bit rate.
It won’t hurt quality. Most audio casts are at 64, some are at 96 or 128 but never 192 for audio. The vast majority; NPR, WBUR, WNYC are at 64
Hope this helps
Any chance you can update the download links in iTunes as well. While I can canload the mp3s directly and import them, they don’t import as part of the LLVLC folder in my podcasts. Not a big deal, but nice to have.
Jimmy, Kevin, thank you. I really appreciate how you deal with these technical issues rapidly and also how you will personally and respectfully respond when called upon. Because of your excellent lineup and continual curiosity on such a number of fronts, llvlc remains broadly helpful, I am sure, to far more people than most of us can even imagine. Keep up the great work. (iTunes is still slow, btw, but I managed to directly download the other Encore episodes quite quickly now.).
Juan