Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Carrier AT&T throttling/preventing App store downloads?

B

bgro

macrumors 65816
Jul 6, 2010
1,143
697
South Florida
blizaine said:
This morning on the way to work (7:45a EST) Music and apps were still not working. As of the last 10 min or so (10a EST), every thing new I've tried to play via apple music has played perfectly. Is the problem resolved for others?
Click to expand...

Still working intermittently for me. Apple Music wouldn't play on the first half of my morning commute and then all of a sudden things started working. Seems to be working now as well.

App Store downloads are working too but going really slow. Hard to tell if it's the issue we're all having or my crappy LTE service in the office.

I wouldn't say this issue is fixed yet but definitely seems to be getting better (at least for me).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Statusnone88
Statusnone88

Statusnone88

macrumors 68000
Jun 19, 2010
1,579
832
bgro said:
Still working intermittently for me. Apple Music wouldn't play on the first half of my morning commute and then all of a sudden things started working. Seems to be working now as well.

App Store downloads are working too but going really slow. Hard to tell if it's the issue we're all having or my crappy LTE service in the office.

I wouldn't say this issue is fixed yet but definitely seems to be getting better (at least for me).
Click to expand...

Same here. Started updating apps going through the Starbucks drive through this morning (on LTE, not Starbucks WiFi) and they wouldn't even move. 3-4 minutes later they started updating and finished.

So weird.
 
TL24

TL24

macrumors 65816
Oct 20, 2011
1,456
1,359
I can confirm that downloads from the App Store is working on LTE again here in Minnesota. We'll see how long this lasts or if it's fully resolved!
 
  • Like
Reactions: protobiont
mdawid

mdawid

macrumors regular
Mar 14, 2011
190
66
Not working so great in CT. App store downloads are working painfully slow. Not to mention, I couldn't even watch a video clip from the weather channel without constant hiccups. Starting to get really annoyed. My phone has turned into an expensive paper weight!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Statusnone88
mdawid

mdawid

macrumors regular
Mar 14, 2011
190
66
Just ran a speedtest - getting DL speeds of 0.30mbps & upload speeds of 0.12mbps. This is ridiculous! A trip to the Apple Genius Bar or AT&T is in my future. Any thoughts on where I may succeed the most?
 
Zimmy68

Zimmy68

macrumors 68020
Jul 23, 2008
2,012
1,685
Looks like it is working for me in the Tampa Bay area.
I have only done limited tests but selecting a song that was not on my phone, it started playing immediate on LTE.
I turned back on iTunes Match and I am not seeing my playlists so there still may be bugs.
 
P

protobiont

macrumors 6502a
Jul 6, 2010
650
141
mdawid said:
Just ran a speedtest - getting DL speeds of 0.30mbps & upload speeds of 0.12mbps. This is ridiculous! A trip to the Apple Genius Bar or AT&T is in my future. Any thoughts on where I may succeed the most?
Click to expand...

You definitely have a different issue than the rest of us were having. My speeds were great, but specific Apple services were slow. It sounds like your speeds are slow across the board, which you definitely want to look into.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BoxerGT2.5
S

Scottadus

macrumors member
Sep 23, 2014
54
6
Nothing has changed. Speed test a very fast 45 mbps. Trying to download Google drive update and it won't go. I tried again and it took over half hour. Come on .b
 
blizaine

blizaine

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 17, 2003
355
157
Scottadus said:
Nothing has changed. Speed test a very fast 45 mbps. Trying to download Google drive update and it won't go. I tried again and it took over half hour. Come on .b
Click to expand...

It probably won't make a difference. But mine started working after I was playing around with disabling LTE and re-enabling it. When I did it the other day it made no difference. But today, everything started working after I did that. Maybe AT&T fixed something or made a config change but it requires your LTE connection to be renegotiated or something. Worth trying at least.
 
P

protobiont

macrumors 6502a
Jul 6, 2010
650
141
blizaine said:
It probably won't make a difference. But mine started working after I was playing around with disabling LTE and re-enabling it. When I did it the other day it made no difference. But today, everything started working after I did that. Maybe AT&T fixed something or made a config change but it requires your LTE connection to be renegotiated or something. Worth trying at least.
Click to expand...

I don't know. Music is working better (had a small hiccup just now), news also seems better, but still slower than normal web, and app downloads are still non-functional. Toggling LTE did not help.
 
O

ovo6

Cancelled
Sep 10, 2015
828
435
My issue is with Apple Music sometimes t works fine but sometimes the songs keep skipping and only like 30%
Of my library works, maybe it has to do with the cache
 
G

GusHerb

macrumors member
Jun 25, 2013
59
2
Chicago / Northwest, IN
I've been having this problem intermittently for the past month, two weeks before iOS 9 came out. Yesterday it reached the worst I've seen it. I even drove down to the at&t tower by my house, speedtests were coming in at 60 Mbps and Apple Music still wouldn't work. I pay for 20 GB's so they have zero reason to be throttling me.
 
S

scott523

macrumors 6502a
Sep 8, 2006
874
129
Saint Charles, MO
Finally this made it to the front page. I had this issue for several days and gave up. Apps are now downloading fine over LTE.

Why is this always happening when Apple releases something new? This shouldn't be a bug. Last time this happened was around July 1st, which I sent it up to the FCC. Now it's happening as iOS 9 and the new iPhones are released.
 
Last edited:
T

Tritto

macrumors regular
Jan 29, 2014
114
56
Not going to scroll through nine pages to see if anyone has already mentioned it but users of the largest carrier in Australia (Telstra) are reportedly experiencing similar issues.
 
N

NeovitaMMX

macrumors newbie
Mar 8, 2011
8
0
Florida
My problem is that my iPhone 6s won't even CONNECT to LTE. AT&T said I should be, but can see that my device hasn't attempted to connect yet. This has caused my Apple Music not to be able to load for more than a few seconds. Possibly same issue? AT&T has pushed multiple carrier/network updates and I've even gone so far as to restore my phone to factory, but issue persists. I'll be taking the phone to Apple in a week if it keeps up. The 4G speeds are down around 1-2GBps
 
uhaas

uhaas

macrumors 6502
Aug 31, 2012
416
203
Boston, MA
uhaas said:
I also believe it's a CDN thing, because when I have the issue, if I cancel and restart the download, after 2-5 tries of that it downloads immediately on LTE. I suspect that each cancel/restart gives it a chance to select a different server to download from, eventually getting to one that works.
Click to expand...

After reading all the posts, I'm sticking to CDN/DNS being the issue. Most companies will run a production backend (servers), with a pre-production backend offing new features (iOS 9) as pre-production having beta users on that. Some people said a week before iOS 9 came out, the issues started. Note that some people are having issues on 8.4.1 and iPhone 4S.

I'm guessing that's when Apple switched the pre-production Content Distribution Network (CDN) over to production. We reach those services through DNS. When you try to download from the App Store, stream music or use other Apple-based iCloud services, Apple's CDN will try to optimize your download by picking a server that's close to you, or not overloaded, or just round-robin it, depending on a number of configuration factors.

It seems to me, that AT&T, the Australia telecom mentioned and a few other providers DNS servers or not responding correctly to Apple's DNS Servers responses, and returning bad or cached DNS entries to unoptimized servers (far away or overloaded) and thus it's taking forever to load. The Apple CDN servers could reside within AT&T's infrastructure (CDN networks may be built that way) and that server is behaving badly (bad load, server issue, or running beyond capacity).

It's not just downloads, but starting the download, the circle spinner, also takes a while before the download begins.

Remember when MR stated Apple was building a CDN a year or so ago, I assume this is just CDN roll out pains. There are a number of networking and server engineering efforts that go into building out a robust, stable CDN. The fact that it's localized to just a few carriers points to CDN issues and not completely AT&T's fault, since the rest of the data flowing over LTE seems unfettered.

That doesn't mean it isn't an AT&T issue. AT&T could be hosting the server or their DNS infrastructure could be to blame.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bgro
tdwin2000

tdwin2000

macrumors newbie
Sep 30, 2015
3
0
yanki01 said:
...and now a 17mb app takes 4 minutes to download. PERFECT!!
Click to expand...
This morning, I tried the suggested music in my car on the way to work...on Apple Music. It worked and sounded like it wasn't going to quit...so I skipped that song, skipped the next song and then skipped to another song..after doing that, it froze up. So, appears to be better than before but still not the perfect way it was prior to the problems starting
 
B

bgro

macrumors 65816
Jul 6, 2010
1,143
697
South Florida
tdwin2000 said:
This morning, I tried the suggested music in my car on the way to work...on Apple Music. It worked and sounded like it wasn't going to quit...so I skipped that song, skipped the next song and then skipped to another song..after doing that, it froze up. So, appears to be better than before but still not the perfect way it was prior to the problems starting
Click to expand...
Yup this has been my experience as well. However, it seems like my issues have disappeared today.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom