.Mac performance concerns in Europe

European users have been posting complaints on Apple's discussion forums about poor download performance from .Mac servers. A typical post goes like this:

Whenever I try do download a movie from my web gallery, or when the browser loads the movie for playing it's much slower than my Internet line allows.

I'm on a 4Mbit line, but downloads are capped at around 78kb/sek (like a 768kbit line).

The same is true for Apple's demo gallery, and for files downloaded from my public folder using the filesharing page.

Apple has acknowledged the problem in an announcement post:

Apple is aware that some .Mac members in Europe have reported slow performance. Some of these members are concerned that this may be due to bandwidth limitations placed by Apple. We would like to clarify that this current performance issue is not caused by Apple's bandwidth limitations, which are described in the following article:

.Mac data transfer limitshttp://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303786

Apple is actively working with customers in Europe to collect further data to help us better investigate any performance issues. If you'd like to help with this investigation, please contact .Mac Support by visiting http://www.apple.com/support/dotmac/publishing/# and filling out the webform.