Downloading large files with limited internet bandwidth (ie SmartBro)

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Mr. Bobo
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I live in a rural area and my only option for internet is SmartBro mobile internet. At times my bandwidth is measured in KB rather than MB. I keep myself busy in my retirement by developing Android mobile phone applications and sometimes have to download very large files (ie 500MB). When I lived in Las Vegas and had a 10 MB DSL internet the download would be measured in minutes. Here in the provinces where my SmartBro bandwidth sometimes is measured in KB a  large file download can take hours. Many times I have started a large download (ie 500MB) before going to bed only to wake up in the morning to find out that after 400MB was downloaded the SmartBro internet connection dropped while I was sleeping. It is really frustrating because when it happens I have to restart the download from scratch the next night. Well I found a product called IDM (internet download manager) that is a real lifesaver. The most important feature of IDM is the ability to restart the download from the point where the download failed. It has many other bells and whistles too. It gives you the actual real time download speed (ie 45KB per sec), percentage of the file that has been downloaded, time remaining, etc. With SmartBro you can have a slow connection and if you disconnect and reconnect your Wi-Fi you may get a connection that is 5 times faster than the previous one so the ability to see what is happening is real time is important. If I start a download and the transfer rate is slow (ie 20kb per second) I just disconnect and reconnect my SmartBro Wi-Fi connection until I get a faster connection and restart the download. You can download the IDM for free and try it for 30 days. It's cheap to buy at 30 USD and it may save you a lot of grey hairs.

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expatuk2014
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may I ask what kind of files you normally download ?

applications movies etc

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Mr. Bobo
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For the most part I download Android development software. Every time there is a new release of Android or an update to a current release the new software must be downloaded into my development environment which is Android Studio. I recently had a hard drive failure and lost everything. The two USB sticks that I had everything backed up on had mysteriously disappeared. My recovery required the downloading of many GBs of software.

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Mike S
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Been using it for years and one of the few programs I found worth paying for .... JMHO

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Richieboy67
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$30 is a ton to pay for a download manager. I am sure there are apps on Android that are cheap and for Windows just use a Firefox extension.

 

I hear you though..Smart bro sucked where we were near Taal lake. I could barely check my email.

 

 

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