Took 20 mins to download ~ 1000 videos but now takes 2 hours to download 200 files

[arlo-user123]

Well good morning everyone - while you were sleeping Arlo in their great wisdom has made a major change to their website that will affect anyone who downloads their recordings from the site.

As far as I can tell, they have changed from using AWS to host their video files to having them stored on their own servers and the results are... HORRIBLE.

Until today, I have alway been able to download my files relatively quickly, taking about 20 minutes to download ~ 1,000 videos. Now after this change, it has taken 2 hours to download only 200 files.

So, if you are like me who archives their videos locally, this change is a major disaster, and knowing how they work, the only time Arlo ever does any fixes is when enough of us complain, so let's get started!

[arlo-user123]

Well good morning everyone - while you were sleeping Arlo in their great wisdom has made a major change to their website that will affect anyone who downloads their recordings from the site.

As far as I can tell, they have changed from using AWS to host their video files to having them stored on their own servers and the results are... HORRIBLE.

Until today, I have always been able to download my files relatively quickly, taking about 20 minutes to download ~ 1,000 videos. Now after this change, it has taken 2 hours to download only 200 files.

So, if you are like me who archives their videos locally, this change is a major disaster, and knowing how they work, the only time Arlo ever does any fixes is when enough of us complain, so let's get started!

[arlo-user123]

Well good morning everyone - while you were sleeping Arlo in their great wisdom has made a major change to their website that will affect anyone who downloads their recordings from the site.

As far as I can tell, they have changed from using AWS to host their video files to having them stored on their own servers and the results are... HORRIBLE.

Until today, I have always been able to download my files relatively quickly, taking about 20 minutes to download ~ 1,000 videos. Now after this change, it has taken 2 hours to download only 200 files.

So, if you are like me who archives their videos locally, this change is a major disaster, and knowing how they work, the only time Arlo ever does any fixes is when enough of us complain, so let's get started!

[arlo-user123]

While until yesterday the links to the stored videos were @amazon.aws, now as of today they look like this: blob:https://my.arlo.com/d82b1bd4-1ab6-374e-8d2d

[arlo-user123]

While until yesterday the links to the stored videos were @amazon.aws, now as of today they look like this: blob:https://my.arlo.com/d82b1bd4-1ab6-374e-8d2d

[arlo-user123]

While until yesterday the links to the stored videos were @amazon.aws, now as of today they look like this: blob:https://my.arlo.com/d82b1bd4-1ab6-374e-8d2d

[jguerdat]

my.arlo.com resolves to a host site, not Arlo itself. It used to be hosted on AWS but a while ago it was moved to Cloudflare. You can use the command "whois" to resolve who owns the IP address.

[arlo-user123]

Well, I can tell you this issue with the downloads started only today, so something's cha ged for the worse.

[jguerdat]

Arlo used to use AWS but changed to Cloudflare a while ago. The various connections to Arlo are based on DNS, not necessarily the company itself. You can use the command "whois" to see who owns the actual IP address.

[arlo-user123]

I have checked again and at least on my account that is incorrect. The download links as of yesterday were still at AWS so this is something that just switched over last night. Either way there is a significant problem here when downloading videos.

[dcfox1]

I just download several vids and it only took less the 5 seconds per vid, the same as before. 

[arlo-user123]

Several videos would probably not show much difference but if you have 2-3 thousand videos then it takes hours versus minutes that it took before. It also does not perform simultaneous downloads as before which is obviously related.

[arlo-user123]

I have been using the Arlo system for years and regularly archive my daily video clips by choosing Select All and Download (much prefer to confirm them than to rely on a connected USB that I have to manually check).

On a typical day, downloading 3,000 videos takes about 30 minutes in Firefox and a little longer in Chrome. For each video, the link to the amazon.aws server is loaded into a new tab, the file is automatically downloaded, and the tab closes. As I said, this has worked without any problems for years. And when you check on the file's info, it retains the full amazon.aws link to confirm that it was, in fact, downloaded from Amazon's servers.

As of February 25th, everything changed. First, selecting all the videos (not to mention downloading them) chokes the laptop to the point where the fan is running so loud that it often forces the the computer to shut down. And when I attempt to perform the downloads exactly as I have done for years before, it chokes almost from the start and perhaps downloads a dozen or so files after an hour or more. And very telling, the browser no longer opens multiple tabs, it just performs the downloads – such as they are – from within the main window.

There is definitely something not right here,

After taking a deeper dive, here is what I found using Developer Tools in both browsers. First, the video clips are still stored on the amazon.aws server. You can clearly see all the links within the page code. But second, the downloaded files' info (as well as the browsers' download path histories) shows them being downloaded from the url listed as blob:myarlo.com.

So, what's happening here, and the reason the website is choking, is that rather than having the video files download directly from the amazon.aws server, they are getting passed one by one to the my.arlo server and then to the browser, which is the most ridiculous and utterly useless way to handle the file downloads.

Naturally, Arlo support is equally useless and fails to address the issue at all. So, if anyone out there in the community had some ideas about this, I would love to hear them. Being unable to download the video clips is a complete betrayal of the customers that built this business.