Dark0ne Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 Since 2007, Nexus Mods has had a download speed cap of 1MB a second on all downloads unless the user is a Premium Member. Starting this week, this download speed cap has been increased to 2MB a second if certain criteria are met. Why does Nexus Mods place a speed cap on downloads?The download speed cap on Nexus Mods ensures we can budget for and keep our substantial bandwidth bills within an acceptable price range and makes sure we aren't shocked (or utterly destroyed!) by spiralling bandwidth costs. We use a global CDN to serve our files and our bandwidth is charged by the 95th percentile method. Essentially, that means we're charged based on the speeds we deliver, not the total amount of files that are downloaded. Thus, the faster users download from us, the more our bandwidth bills will cost. By limiting the speeds, we ensure that our expenses remain linked to the number of users who use our site and not the connection speeds of our user base. As a result, it's far easier to budget our bandwidth bills based on our active user base because more users typically means more ad revenue which means the increased bandwidth costs will be offset by the increased advertising income. If we didn't cap our downloads we could not budget in the same way. What are the caps?Premium Members who have financially supported Nexus Mods are able to download without a speed cap as they are directly supporting the upkeep of the sites. If you're interested in finding out about all the perks of Premium Membership, or want to become a Premium Member, please head to our information page. Thus, up until now, there have been two tiers of users on Nexus Mods when it comes to download speeds: Normal users. Members who have not bought Premium Membership. These users are capped at 1MB/second.Premium Members. Members who have an active Premium Membership. These users are not capped.We've now created a third tier of users on Nexus Mods that directly impacts the download speed cap. This third tier includes "Supporters", and users who do not use Adblockers. Supporters are users who previously bought a Premium Membership that has since expired (or who have specifically bought the "Supporter" membership from the site for a price of £1.29). Supporters, along with users not using Adblockers, will have their download cap increased to 2MB a second, which is double what Adblock users will receive. This is how the speed cap tiers now look: Adblock users. Members who have not bought Premium Membership and use Adblockers on the site. These users are capped at 1MB/second.Supporters and non-Adblock users. Members who are in the Supporter member group or who consistently do not use Adblockers on Nexus Mods. These users are capped at 2MB/second.Premium Members. Members who have an active Premium Membership. These users are not capped. This speed cap increase is live now for manual downloads and will be rolled out to Vortex within the next two weeks. Why increase the speed for non-Adblock users and Supporters?Simply put, if you're reading this, you've cost us money. To keep this site running we need to pay a very hefty price. From direct expenses, like the servers and bandwidth that are used to serve the page content to you, to more indirect but equally important expenses like our office space, the staff that maintain and improve the site, the hardware we work on, software license fees, HR, payroll, legal fees, insurance and so on and so forth. All of these expenses need to be accounted for in order to keep these sites up and running well. If you'd like a full breakdown of what Nexus Mods needs money for, we've dedicated an entire page of the site to an infographic that puts it all in to easy to read data points. You can see that page here. In this age of Adblockers, we believe that the users who financially support the site should be rewarded for their help. Whether by directly donating towards the site by buying Premium or Supporter Memberships or simply by choosing to not use an Adblocker while browsing the site, these users are the ones who help to keep the site up and fully operational. Without them, Nexus Mods would simply cease to exist. We believe the help they provide, consciously or unconsciously, should be incentivised and rewarded. On the flip side, we do not want to punish users who want to use Adblockers but do not financially contribute to the running of the site. There are myriad different reasons why users choose to use Adblockers, and a lot of them are perfectly valid. For these users, their experience is not changing at all. They'll still be able to browse the site and receive the same experience as they always have done in the past. In conclusion, we are now rewarding users who contribute financially to the running of the site and we are not placing any further caps or punishing users who use Adblockers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StantonCree Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 (edited) great news! was thinking of buying life time premium for a while but, I'm a poor college student so you know how it goes :( Edited October 3, 2018 by StantonCree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercury71 Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :( Nexus has never been this slow for me before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted October 3, 2018 Author Share Posted October 3, 2018 (edited) In response to post #64073761. Mercury71 wrote: Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :( Nexus has never been this slow for me before.What file server are you downloading from? We haven't changed anything on the file servers for this, but I'm happy to do a quick test. Edited October 3, 2018 by Dark0ne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimboUK Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 In response to post #64073496. StantonCree wrote: great news! was thinking of buying life time premium for a while but, I'm a poor college student so you know how it goes :(It's worth thinking about if you're going to be around for a while and you find yourself better off, I got mine 8 years ago and had more than my money's worth out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valshares24 Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 Work in NMM too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercury71 Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 In response to post #64073761. Mercury71 wrote: Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :sad: Nexus has never been this slow for me before.What file server are you downloading from? We haven't changed anything on the file servers for this, but I'm happy to do a quick test. EU1... Going to try EU2 and see what happens. I live in Sweden. I am in a middle of an 1,2 GB download so it will take some time before i can restart browser and mod manager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted October 3, 2018 Author Share Posted October 3, 2018 In response to post #64073991. Mercury71 wrote: In response to post #64073761. Mercury71 wrote: Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :sad: Nexus has never been this slow for me before.What file server are you downloading from? We haven't changed anything on the file servers for this, but I'm happy to do a quick test. EU1... Going to try EU2 and see what happens. I live in Sweden. I am in a middle of an 1,2 GB download so it will take some time before i can restart browser and mod manager.Which mod manager are you using? We can only provide support on manual downloads and Vortex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercury71 Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 In response to post #64073991. Mercury71 wrote: EU1... Going to try EU2 and see what happens. I live in Sweden. I am in a middle of an 1,2 GB download so it will take some time before i can restart browser and mod manager. In response to post #64073761. Mercury71 wrote: Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :sad: Nexus has never been this slow for me before.What file server are you downloading from? We haven't changed anything on the file servers for this, but I'm happy to do a quick test. Which mod manager are you using? We can only provide support on manual downloads and Vortex. Vortex 1.16.8. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted October 3, 2018 Author Share Posted October 3, 2018 In response to post #64074071. Mercury71 wrote: In response to post #64073991. Mercury71 wrote: EU1... Going to try EU2 and see what happens. I live in Sweden. I am in a middle of an 1,2 GB download so it will take some time before i can restart browser and mod manager. In response to post #64073761. Mercury71 wrote: Of some reason i download at about 200-500 KB/s today :sad: Nexus has never been this slow for me before.What file server are you downloading from? We haven't changed anything on the file servers for this, but I'm happy to do a quick test. Which mod manager are you using? We can only provide support on manual downloads and Vortex. Vortex 1.16.8.I'm currently downloading at 20MB/second from EU1 on a manual download.Please can you try manually downloading and seeing if it's still an issue. That would tell us whether it's your connection or whether it's Vortex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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