ForeFlight background downloads

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

Touchdown! Greaser!
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I keep having my background maps downloads stop with a notification that "downloads stopped. Open ForeFlight to resume"

Any idea why it does that? I have to restart downloads on WiFi multiple times to get the full cycle of updates. Stable 200 Mbps down link...
 
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I just update at night when it can stay in the foreground. Background routinely halts.
 
Define "background".

Before FF had background downloads, you not only couldn't switch to another app, you couldn't do anything else in FF. You had to leave it on the download page or the download would stop until you switched back to that page.

I routinely do other stuff in FF while downloading and it works pretty reliably (except that once in a while, FF crashes and I have to restart both it and the download). I don't go switching to other apps while that's going on though, mainly because I only do major downloads at home, where I don't have any other use for my iPad.
 
I prefer to download in the evening and let ff download ,while download is in progress I don't use other apps.seems to work much better.
 
frfly172 said:
I prefer to download in the evening and let ff download ,while download is in progress I don't use other apps.seems to work much better.
Click to expand...

I didn't know there was any other way! :dunno:
 
Funny, after re-hitting "download" for the 20th or so time this morning while downloading the new foreflight data, I see this thread.

My iPad has never liked to download without pausing regardless of if foreflight is in the foreground or background. It'll download 15 to 20 files and then stop.

In my case though, I think it's because my iPad and droid phone, in wi-fi hot spot mode, don't like playing nice together. the iPad disconnects itself on a regular basis and I have to manually reconnect. Still running an iPad one here...

My laptops never have an issue.
 
Guys I was having major download issues with Forefligjt last evening too. I bet ya something was up with the servers. I was trying to update charts and it usually takes about 10 minutes to download all the charts I need. Last night it took 20 minutes just to download Massachusetts and Connecticut.

I tried again this morning and it downloaded super fast.
 
flhrci said:
My guess is that the iPad currently is not allowed to multitask.

David
Click to expand...
Depends maybe on the iPad. Mine plays music from an app or over a web page while I read something or look at ForeFlight.

My downloads were slow but they did come through. I'd guess all us ForeFlight owners are updating at the same time and there's only so much their servers can handle. I wonder if sending the data out periodically via UDP (like music) would work better for the first few days.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Depends maybe on the iPad. Mine plays music from an app or over a web page while I read something or look at ForeFlight.

My downloads were slow but they did come through. I'd guess all us ForeFlight owners are updating at the same time and there's only so much their servers can handle. I wonder if sending the data out periodically via UDP (like music) would work better for the first few days.
Click to expand...

Music is not killed off if started as a media service thread. Downloads are not included in this.

I think a combination of issues are at work here. Downloads were slow because new charts were released. Shower downloads means more time spent in the background. More time spent in the background means more opportunity to get killed by iOS.

Reference https://developer.apple.com/library....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH4-SW20
 
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ChrisK said:
Music is not killed off if started as a media service thread. Downloads are not included in this.

I think a combination of issues are at work here. Downloads were slow because new charts were released. Shower downloads means more time spent in the background. More time spent in the background means more opportunity to get killed by iOS.

Reference https://developer.apple.com/library....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH4-SW20
Click to expand...
So send the chart data out as if it were music in a repeating loop. The program "listens" to the data stream until it "sees" a chart you need, and save it. Listen for the next chart (or other information). I know I used to send instrument data as UDP just because it was a very private network and I know the data was going to be received. UDP isn't just for music. Sending it this way, there's only a single set of data going out and the server can handle it. If that's too longg to wait, set up more UDP streams. Even if there were one repeating UDP set for every chart, thet's certainly less data handled by the server than all of us requesting the charts.
 
I'm pretty sure ForeFlight uses Amazon S3/Cloudfront for serving the chart data.

This probably ends up being FAR more reliable than if FF ran their own servers....
 
flhrci said:
My guess is that the iPad currently is not allowed to multitask.
Click to expand...

Wow, you're behind the times - iOS has had limited multitasking for quite a while now.

Cap'n Jack said:
So send the chart data out as if it were music in a repeating loop. The program "listens" to the data stream until it "sees" a chart you need, and save it. Listen for the next chart (or other information). I know I used to send instrument data as UDP just because it was a very private network and I know the data was going to be received. UDP isn't just for music. Sending it this way, there's only a single set of data going out and the server can handle it. If that's too longg to wait, set up more UDP streams. Even if there were one repeating UDP set for every chart, thet's certainly less data handled by the server than all of us requesting the charts.
Click to expand...

That's not really how iOS works. Processes that the user can see or interact with have the top priority. If those processes need more memory, iOS will kill background tasks to get it. ForeFlight has built in a notification for when this happens so that you can get the downloads re-started quickly.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
So send the chart data out as if it were music in a repeating loop. The program "listens" to the data stream until it "sees" a chart you need, and save it. Listen for the next chart (or other information). I know I used to send instrument data as UDP just because it was a very private network and I know the data was going to be received. UDP isn't just for music. Sending it this way, there's only a single set of data going out and the server can handle it. If that's too longg to wait, set up more UDP streams. Even if there were one repeating UDP set for every chart, thet's certainly less data handled by the server than all of us requesting the charts.
Click to expand...

Apple would kill them :)

I find it annoying too.
 
It's not just ForeFlight. My iPad ain't liking much of anything the last couple of days.
 
If you have an iPad 1, it's horribly out of date - you are due for an upgrade.
 
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