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The OSX Lion download is +3 GB, so Apple customers must take care of TCP errors (or at least Apple Support would be swamped with support requests). Two possib
by silvestrov 15y ago
The OSX Lion download is +3 GB, so Apple customers must take care of TCP errors (or at least Apple Support would be swamped with support requests).
Two possible ways of solving this: make a download into e.g. 16 MB chunks and append a SHA-1 checksum for each chunk (not enterely unlike BitTorrent). Then re-download the chunks where the SHA-1 doesn't match. Another solution would be to use e.g. Red Solomon error correction.
- brianwski 15y agoYep, Apple solves this problem by using their "AppStore" application to reliably download the file in chunks (like you suggested). My complaint is that Apple should extend Safari to be able to download the OS X Lion download reliably. (Then let the rest of us use that protocol.) It seems a bit insane that the OS group at Apple had to write their own custom download application, but did not think to extend their web browser to allow for "restartable downloads that are no longer corrupted". Microsoft does the same thing -> they have a custom application to download their OS updates reliably. They do not use Internet Explorer's regular download capability because of the limitations. It baffles me that the big browser companies (Google with Chrome, Apple with Safari, Microsoft with IE) are not interested in building a standard reliable downloader. I mean, what else does a web browser really do?