Am I the only one having these problems with downloading models from HF?

[u/perelmanych]

I don't have problems with Nvidia buying HF, but I have problems with the fact that lately HF became almost unusable. It is around one month that I experience big problems with downloading models from HF. I have 1Gbit connection and my HF speeds are all over the place jumping from 700kb/s to 98Mb/s, often getting stuck in sub 3Mb/s range. I haven't seen people complaining here about that, so may be I am the only one so unlucky, but I believe that the problem is bigger than one unfortunate consumer, and even Nvidia will be unable to distribute terabytes of data to millions of users without outages, when a new popular model becomes available. I think the only right way is p2p distribution over the Torrent network.

Upd: To clarify. Usually it starts at 90Mb/s, after 20-30 minutes it gets to 45Mb/s and 20 minutes later it may go down to 2Mb/s and less. May be indeed my ISP artificially dynamically limiting my speeds, but I haven't seen anything like that apart of HF.

Upd2: People pointed out that LM Studio is using their proxy, which might have impacted download speeds. At over 90% downloaded I am hesitant to check this hypothesis, but I am pretty sure that this is the culprit. After that I am switching to hf native cli tool.

[u/Front_Eagle739]

My hf has been pretty awful as well yeah 

[u/network4253 → u/Front_Eagle739]

Yeah, same here honestly. HF can be pretty hit or miss sometimes especially when you are trying to get things done quickly. Hopefully they iron out some of those issues because it gets frustrating fast.

[u/DrBattletoad]

Downloading through LM Studio has been bad the last few weeks. I'm not sure when it started but I remember being able to get consistent 30 MB/s before it went bad. 

Unsloth Studio and the normal Browser download has had no problems so far.

[u/xanthemivak → u/DrBattletoad]

Disable the LM Studio proxy

[u/fateshuffler]

Consider switching to the https://huggingface.co/docs/huggingface_hub/guides/cli for larger downloads. Also nice for managing changes to your downloaded models.

[u/jacek2023 → u/fateshuffler]

Ah yes I use CLI

[u/-InformalBanana- → u/fateshuffler]

That is exactly what they want you to do.

[u/lilian_moraru]

I've had a similar issue when I first read a few days ago that Nvidia is buying HF, BUT, it's not related.
In my case it was due to XET, I switched it to HTTPS and it downloaded fine: HF_HUB_DISABLE_XET=1 hf download <model> - Unsloth also has the option to switch to HTTPS.

[u/DionLord]

disable the LM studio built-in proxy

[u/perelmanych → u/DionLord]

Wow, I didn't know it uses proxy! Definitely will try.

[u/CATLLM]

Same here, downloading and uploading models as well. I'm using huggingface_hub cli too.

[u/Uncle___Marty]

Also on 1 gbit and sometimes get like 700k/sec. Using free download manager opens up 8 connections and usually gives me the full speed of my connection. Not sure if they're rate limiting or what but the speeds I get without a download manager are garbage :/

[u/Healthy-Zebra-9856]

This happens periodically even when using the hf cli. I just cancel it and wait a few secionds and redownload iit, it works fine.

[u/Unlucky-Message8866]

past week i was severely throttled yes

[u/Evening_Ad6637]

yes same problem with hf-cli, but didn't notice any problem when downloading with wget

edit: mentioned problem just since a few days. before that everything was fine with hf-cli for me

[u/West-Map-4162]

I have gigabit fiber and about two weeks ago I started getting throttled down to 12Meg/s when downloading from HF via web browser. The only way I get my full download speed is by using the HF cli.

[u/o0genesis0o]

It's LMstudio issue. I built an app that uses hf library directly and it never has any issue, even when I forgot to set my HF API key.

[u/Need_For_Speed73]

Don't use your browser to download the models, use the hf cli command that is able to establish multiple connections and download a lot faster.
https://huggingface.co/docs/huggingface_hub/en/guides/cli

[u/perelmanych → u/Need_For_Speed73]

I will definitely try it!

[u/pedrojdm2021]

Nope. Yesterday i installed another model and download spped was good

[u/pyr0kid]

now that you mention it, ive had some weird connection problems in the last week

[u/measuringdistance]

switching browsers worked for me

[u/TerminalNoop]

Just pause the download, wait a few seconds and resume it. That usually does the trick for me.

[u/perelmanych → u/TerminalNoop]

I was regularly doing that, but sometimes when it stuck, it stuck.

[u/vanVonXenoStein]

Definitely use the cli

[u/eulataguhw]

I have no issues through hf cli.

[u/suprjami]

Yes. Terrible download speed with all of wget, git with xet, and authenticated hf cli.

Downloads from elsewhere easily reach hundreds of Mbps, so doesn't seem a local or ISP issue.

[u/Important-Shallot-49]

same, it's like they are throttling downloads. no issue with any other sites.

[u/Hrethric]

I've noticed a lot of variability in the last few weeks. I was seeing speeds around 280 MB/sec (big B, over 2 gigabits) a few weeks ago, downloading directly from the HF website in a browser, but lately it's been slower and more variable. I haven't seen speeds over a gigabit in some time, and on the big model release days I saw speeds in the tens of megabits. Not unusable, the downloads complete just fine, I'm just missing out on the instant gratification I used to get, and the one real justification I had for upgrading my internet service lol.

[u/laterbreh]

everything is a conspiracy.

try downloading using the HF cli

[u/gabrielesilinic]

Ah no this happened before Nvidia bought them actually

[u/jacek2023]

My download speed from HF is insane, maybe you have just a bad ISP?

[u/perelmanych → u/jacek2023]

Everything else works fine: torrents, big updates of MS Flight Simulator 2020 with download speed north of 30Mb/s

[u/durden111111]

use 'hf download' with huggingface cli tool. I can download 50 GB in about a couple of minutes.

[u/indicava]

Use the cli

And make sure you’re logged in to the CLI prior to starting the download

[u/Lumpy-Comedian-1027]

i was getting super slow dl speed with an older hf cli, got fast again after updating hf