Poddies in China - connection problems?

dahouxiaohou
December 18, 2011, 02:14 AM posted in General Discussion

Hi all,

just wondering if anybody else in Mainland China is having difficulty dowloading/streaming the audio content for each lesson.

My internet is slow, but it's still fast enough to watch movies/tv online, and to download torrents in a reasonable amount of time. It's definitely good enough to download a small audio file.

So is it just CPOD's servers or what? If so, they really ought to xiang'ing a banfa pretty soon, or they'll be making their service unusable for a large swathe of their followers!

Profile picture
bababardwan
December 18, 2011, 02:44 AM

Sorry, I'm not in China, but on a similar theme, today's lesson [BST] should have come out 44 minutes ago and there's still no sign of it. Zenme ban?

Profile picture
zhenlijiang

I wonder if CPod are aware of this, an apparent problem with the site. The Dec 18 BST I see appears on the Community Conversations page now, but I know it didn't yesterday at the time it should have, as you noted.

And it also appears on my dashboard now. But when I click on the dashboard "Lesson" button it takes me to the page, then I'm apparently not logged in. I couldn't have gotten to my dashboard without logging in, so there's something wrong. Was anyone else able to listen to this lesson?

Profile picture
bababardwan

thanks for letting us know it's there now Zhen. It wasn't there as of a few hours ago. I checked the library also and it wasn't there.

Profile picture
bodawei

Yes, it is all a bit strange. I did not appear for me either. When I read your post I checked my Dashboard and ... it was not there. I then looked in the Library and it was second on the list. I opened it and listened, and when I went back it was then on the Dashboard. They are toying with our minds!

Profile picture
jennyzhu

It wasn't published due to a technical error, which was fixed earlier in the day. Our sincere apologies.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/traditional-food-during-the-spring-festival

Profile picture
bababardwan

No worries Jenny. I was just curious as no-one had commented, and I actually wondered whether there had been an announcement on the last BST that they were taking a break for Chrissy. It's all good in the hood. :)

Profile picture
bodawei
December 18, 2011, 12:28 PM

All these problems streaming in China seem to have occurred over the past three or four months - corresponding to the time that I've been in Australia, and I'm convinced there is a causal relationship between ChinesePod's woes and my absence. 

Don't worry guys, I'll be back in a couple of months. I'm sure things will return to normal from the moment the wheels of my plane kiss the tarmac. 

Profile picture
bodawei
December 18, 2011, 12:40 PM

Currently on the site I have my last three avatars appearing on different pages - this is a first as far as I can remember. Seems that there are still gremlins in the avatars. (And no, my latest avatar is not a gremlin. My mate bababardawan tells me that it is a cypress seed pod that he has de-faced. I think in my honour, but I may be being unnecessarily egotistical about that.) 

Profile picture
bababardwan

“de-faced. I think in my honour”

哈哈,就是智慧的柏子,久仰久仰

Profile picture
jennyzhu

I am very sorry about that! Can you let me know if these 3 avatars are all yours, having been used at different stages during your subscription or are they not yours at all?

Profile picture
bodawei

Hi Jenny

Last time I looked I had three different avatars on the site at the same time - the shady footpath scene, the 洋芋饼, and my latest, the funny little fellow we are calling 柏子. The only one I didn't see was my oldest avatar 黑猫警长 ..

It is no problem for me ... I just raise it because it seems something is wrong which might lead to more serious problems.

Profile picture
bodawei

And now it seems all is well, I can only see 柏子.

Profile picture
jennyzhu

Sorry, I don't quite understand the problem. I thought you changed avatars. Are you saying that you didn't upload these?

Profile picture
jennyzhu
December 19, 2011, 10:11 AM

dahouxiaohou,

We did experience slowing down of media downloads during the Oct holiday. The action we took after evaluation was to move to Amazon cloud servers, which significantly speed up downloading. From feedback and our own experience, downloading speed is back to normal now.

Can you tell me if this is a chronic problem or does it happen at certain times during the day? 

 

Profile picture
dahouxiaohou

Hi Jenny,

thanks for the reply. I really don't understand much from the other replys.

The problem has been occuring for me for a few months now (prob since Oct holiday)

at the moment, it seems to work ok on weekday mornings, is more problematic on weekday evenings, and doesn't work at all on the weekends.

I realise this is probably due to my own internet connection being poor, and busy over the weekends, but it's still good enough for me to use every other website I need, and to download much larger files than the lesson audio files.

your IT people told me they are working on a solution, and recommended I get a VPN, but I'm not sure if that would make it any faster.

Thanks in advance.

Profile picture
dahouxiaohou

again - fine this morning, unable to dowload last night.

Profile picture
jennyzhu

This seems to be an issue with local telecom reliability, which unfortunately is not uncommon for sites hosted outside China. I sometimes have problem using Skype during different times of the day. After evaluation, moving to Amazon cloud was the best solution for this problem. But local internet connectivity still plays a dominant role. I am not sure what other options we have. My sincere apologies!

I also think using an VPN would help you access sites hosted outside of China faster and more smoothly.

Profile picture
RJ
December 19, 2011, 02:11 PM

I am also disappointed to learn that AI Chinese will no longer offer importation of ChinesePod lessons due to continual technical issues.

Profile picture
pretzellogic
December 20, 2011, 11:46 AM

I'm having problems creating a post to other groups that I control, such as Sentence Patterns, or groups in which I am a member, such as Technical Problems on Site.  The button to create a post at the bottom doesn't work for me. I'm using IE 8.0 on Windows XP.