Updater terribly slow from China

[Ruien]

Hey there,

I have some friends looking to join Fantasy Grounds. They completed the registration but are stuck on the update.
The problem is that the updater is extremely slow from China. My tests indicate an average speed of 1.152 KB/sec and 34% packet loss to the update server:

me@computer:~$ ping -c 100 104.20.130.20
--- 104.20.130.20 ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 66 received, 34% packet loss, time 99666ms

I know that it's possible for me to download the files remotely and then drop them into the Fantasy Grounds directory. That works for me, but it's beyond the technical capabilities of my friends (and we're operating remotely- hence the need for FG in the first place).
Is there any way I can set up an update server proxy on a machine that I host, and configure FG updater to connect to that IP instead? I imagine we could just route the HTTP requests correctly, the performance problems would be solved easily.

[Moon Wizard]

At 34% packet loss, you are going to have serious problems using any application which is trying to stream real-time or large data packages. I think the update would be slow on any connection with that much loss; plus it will affect your ability to play in FG games as well.

Do they know what is causing the packet loss? Is it wireless interference? Can they connect wired to router? Are they trying to connect over mobile networks?

I hope someone who is more knowledgeable about tracking down packet loss can chime in; but that's going to be a problem no matter what.

Regards,
JPG

[Ruien]

Hello JPG,

Thanks for the reply!

No, you might be misunderstanding. There's no packet loss between myself and others in China. This is only between the local connections and your Update server. I see the same thing when I ping that IP address directly.

One of the best things about Fantasy Grounds is that the actual game is a standard client-to-host setup. So, the terrible connection to the central FG server won't impact our ability to use the software. Between each other, we have pings below 30ms without packet loss.

This problem is entirely between us and your update server. It also hasn't just started - the connection has been bad for a long time. I think it's behind Cloudflare, and Cloudflare won't pay a dime for a solid connection to China.

[Willot]

Your right could be Cloudflare, as Clouldflare is all about preventing DDoS attacks and the like, it might be the IPs are getting blacklisted (China) and your friends are all getting Tarred with the same brush.

Only thing is they use some sort of VPN, so hopefully Cloudflare doesnt realize they are in China; but you have already said they arent very tech Savvy

[LordEntrails]

I suspect it is a combination of Cloudflare and the Great FireWall. But, not sure what can be done at a reasonable cost. Hopefully someone with specific knowledge will jump in and contribute.

[Ruien]

I've decided to just pack up all of the FG .mod, .pak, .dat, etc files into a compressed archive (zip) and distribute that to my friends. They can unzip it into the "Application Data/Fantasy Grounds/" directory.

This also helps solve a different problem I had of how to distribute the GURPS ruleset we're using. (This is such a well-done ruleset, I wish it was officially supported by FG.)

I'll just tell everyone not to click the "Update" button. This workflow also allows me to vet new releases, and ensure that nothing in the GURPS ruleset was broken by the update, before distributing a new zip.