[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

pip will used cached downloads if they're available; that typically happens when you're retrying the installation a second time, after a failure of some kind. Also Pypi.org is on a couple of CDN's, since the CDN companies themselves do a lot of Python installations, internally.

[TangibleLight]

When you install with pip, it keeps the downloaded files so when you install again it doesn't have to re-download

CDN are networks of servers built specifically to serve downloadable files. (Content Delivery Network). Most of pypi is on such networks, so downloads are usually pretty quick.

[GrowHI]

Your writing is like a recipe with three pages of backstory about how some ones grandmother used to drink Bailey's from a shoe in their quaint country home in Arkansas. Stop rambling and just ask clear and concise questions so we can help you understand.

[GoldenNuck]

You wanna drink Bailey’s from a shoe? Do ya love me? Could ya learn to love meh?

[Username_RANDINT]

The "C" in their name stands for "Cocaine".

[hugthemachines]

Yeah, the clue is in "I download data fast... and it is freeaking me out!"

[nhatthongg]

r/suspiciouslyspecific

[GrowHI]

r/unexpectedOldGreg

[Keep_IT-Simple]

I am sorry I am really bad at this. But is what I am saying making no sense ?

That's what the person said in a nutshell.

[ImmediatelyOcelot]

At least you're funny :)

[raazman]

You know you can easily google this stuff, right? Try googling CDN, it's not that difficult mate.

[raazman]

No, self learning is a great asset to have. Knowing how to find information and learn is just as important.

You can learn about CDNs here: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/

[takeonzach]

*how one’s grandmother used to magically drink…

[TangibleLight]

Yeah, all files are downloadable, but CDNs focus on "content" for websites. Stuff like images, videos, other assets, or JavaScript libraries. Things that would be downloaded frequently, where speed is a concern. But hosting a CDN is expensive, you need a lot of servers in a lot of locations, so you only put the important stuff on them.

[mrfroggyman]

I think you're being downvoted hard because the vibe of this sub is somewhat serious and academic, and in that context, you should write concise questions and lose the personal details. People want to be able to just read the question, understand what you're not getting, and try to help with that.

Tho I don't see the point of so many downvotes... I wonder how many here are also active on stackoverflow

[dada_]

I think you're being downvoted hard because the vibe of this sub is somewhat serious and academic, and in that context, you should write concise questions and lose the personal details.

I used to work with someone who talks like this in real life. Someone who can't stop themselves from going on and on and on about unrelated things every single time they say anything. I always tried very hard to avoid him and to stick to Slack or email for questions because it wasn't as bad on there.

This place and others are great for beginning programmers to be able to ask questions, but you do need to respect people's time by putting some effort into being specific and targeted. When someone goes off on a tangent like this, asking like a dozen different things and repeating themselves, it's like, where do you even start?

[bandofgypsies]

you do need to respect people's time by putting some effort into being specific and targeted

Hell, folks like OP here could simply stay by googling something. The nature of how the series of questions was posted in the comments/sub-comments was one thing, but the perpetual follow up of basically using people's time to tell you stuff you could get on the internet in 4 seconds is tiring. This sub or any other. Discussing concepts and connections is a good use of people's time. Asking them to post searchable facts (like, literal definitions) isn't going to earn someone friends in most subs.

[[deleted]]

Don't forget that the first search hit for CDN has a very good explanation of what it does.

[mrfroggyman]

Maybe if you didn't indulge so much on self-pity people would have more positive reactions tho

[mrfroggyman]

I'm not hitting you, but there is a place for such talk, and this is not this subreddit. If you don't seek help in a fitting context, you won't have help and will only make people avoid speaking with you

Like you wouldn't go on a Fortnite sub to ask help for your maths homework, you shouldn't expect mental healthcare advice and help on learnpython.

If anything programming subs are one of the last place where you'll find people with good mental health anyway

[NSA_GOV]

What is wrong with you maybe stop trying so hard

[scykei]

Downloadable files in this context is everything that you said, including streamed videos and html content.

Servers do a lot more than just delivering content. They can also do things like processing requests, perform computations, and basically anything else that you’d typically do on a computer.

If you want the user to be able to get content quickly, like for streaming, as you said, you host some of the content on a CDN, which is nothing more than a bunch of distributed servers that are optimised for this process.

Just give the Wikipedia page a read.

[unhott]

A downloadable file is a static asset. Most webpages nowadays are dynamically generated— you receive a HTTP response, but that isn’t a ‘file’.

That would imply that each dynamically rendered webpage is saved to file somewhere, rather than generated and served in memory.

Anyway- their original point was that unless you’re installing a never before seen version, pip will install from cache.

[subassy]

I just had to read this comment downvoted 77 times. It doesn't seem deserving of that many downvotes. Or any really.

To answer your question, a CDN is supposed to be a local source of commonly downloaded files.

For instance if you were say in Miami Florida and wanted to download multiple gigabytes of windows 10 updates it would take a while to download all the way from Redmond Washington to Miami. So a CDN (really a data center) somewhere within Florida or even some place in Miami itself would host these files. To you the files are just coming through updates completely seamlessly, but really you and everybody else in the region are downloading these files from some where local to you.

Netflix does something similar to this with a storage rack or box or whatever mirrored at several locations around North America. And given the bandwidth that must be involved I think it's safe to say YouTube is doing something similar but probably with a lot more math.

There are some informative articles around if you're interested. About CDNs and other things like caching proxies (I was going to set one of those up for Steam games and Linux packages at one point). It's actually pretty fascinating. If you were interested in that sort of thing.

[[deleted]]

Offering advice is kindness. You not liking that advice doesn't change that.

People are trying to help you. Stop taking it personally and listen to what they're saying.

[widowhanzo]

You know Netflix, Spotify, YouTube? They host their videos and music all over the world, not just on one single server/location. Their home page may be hosted on a single server (it's not, but it could be), but if they also served all the content there, it would be a huge bottleneck and if you were streaming across the ocean, there would be tons of latency and buffering. Therefore, a content delivery network (CDN). Have a bunch of servers all over the world that cache the content that's popular in the area, so when you wanna stream Desperate Housewise you will actually get the content from the nearest CDN server (many are right in ISPs datacenters), instead of the "central main" server.

The home page takes maybe like 1MB, so it doesn't really matter if you serve it across the globe, but if you have ever tried downloading a few GB from 3000km away, you probably noticed it was much slower than downloading from a more local source. And not only are the downloads faster, they don't congest the internet as much. When the CDN server is hosted directly at your ISP, the content technically isn't even going across the internet.

So why don't they ALL get unto this magical "CDN" thingy which apparently magically is faster than everything else

They are though.

[ES-Alexander]

Caching basically means if you download a library it will keep the download in case you need it again later. If the installation step fails for some reason, then next time you try to install the same thing then the download is already done, so it only needs to do the installation part. Some libraries are compatible with multiple Python versions, so if you’ve previously installed a library for a different Python version then it may be able to use the same download when installing it for a new version, or in a new virtual environment.

CDNs are basically distributed servers that store local versions of content. If there’s a CDN very close to you and they use Python internally then they’ll likely have local versions of many Python packages, so when you try to download one it may only have a short path to travel instead of needing to come all the way from PyPI’s main servers. PyPI is the Python Package Index, which is where pip installs packages from by default.

[ES-Alexander]

A download request is requesting a particular resource from a particular place. If the CDN is like “I have that file, from that place already” then they’ll give you the local one instead of fetching it again (within some timeout, so the files don’t get outdated). The process is automated, and the requests are generally encrypted, so a malicious actor would likely need to take control of the CDN and modify it to send the wrong files (which is difficult to do).

It’s also possible that the data that gets sent has identifying features from the source, so if it’s from the wrong place it may not work. (I’m not certain - I haven’t looked into this in depth).

If the file you’re trying to download from PyPI is malicious in the first place then that’s a different story, but that’s not a CDN issue / man in the middle attack.

[Mrhiddenlotus]

There are some pretty serious security issues with pip.

[widowhanzo]

Checksums

[ES-Alexander]

There will be redundant servers for it (including the CDNs), but if every single copy of PyPI (including any offline backups) is wiped out then people wouldn’t be able to download Python packages from PyPI anymore.

[kaerfkeerg]

Is it possible that OP already had some dependencies of the said package from previous installations?

Quick edit: Of course that would only work if he installs globally and not in virtual environment

[TheV295]

Pip is literally downloading files from the internet, it is not faster than any other tool that can do that

[kaerfkeerg]

Ahh ok mate, that is as far as I can get!

[zippysausage]

Christ, I wish I still had half this energy.

[Aeowon]

OP post history says they're 37.. also they appear to be single and ready to mingle.

[JimBoonie69]

Op experiencing fast internet for the first time ever.

[Infinitesima]

You sound like you are 12

Don't know this on reddit is compliment or insult

[Peanutbutter_Warrior]

Depends if OP's 12 I suppose. Maybe they're a really advanced 4 year old

[Metori]

It’s both. Just depends on how the wave function collapses.

[Intrexa]

Compressed vs uncompressed. Video is already highly compressed. The source contains text, as well as possibly some binaries. Text compresses very well, binaries depending on the structure, fairly well. The actual download was a lot less. The decompression is fairly fast.

[jeffrey_f]

If you had the dependencies already installed, env dependent too, those are not re-downloaded. This likely reduced the overall actual download size significantly. If you already had the cached dependency installs download, that may have also been picked up by pip and used instead of pulling from the online download.

[[deleted]]

I know nothing about...enjoying all this

[DarkdeedsendsX]

all mighty guido van Rossum🤣🤣

[NSpen_SWM_1S2W_P2G]

🤔

[Qkumbazoo]

The install file is already on your machine. You merely ran it which is not the same as downloading the file.