5 Min Timeout downloading elevation tifs via http

[Gnative]

Hi Linz NZ.
Firstly thank you for this service.
I'm aiming to use this elevation data for a form of alpine situation awareness functionality in my application.

Recently I've been trying to download the elevation tifs via http

I.E https://nz-elevation.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/new-zealand/new-zealand/dem_1m/2193/BE41.tiff

Around the 5min mark the connection is being timed out.

I've now converted to using the AWS SDK directly to obtain the files which doesn't have this timeout restriction.

Just to let you know that i've experienced this problem

Thank you
Shane

[paulfouquet]

Hi Shane,

We're really glad to hear that you're making use of the NZ elevation data for your application!

Thank you for the heads-up about the timeout issue you've encountered when downloading the TIFF files via HTTPS. From what you've described, it sounds like something along the network (like a browser, firewall, or internet connection) may be closing the connection if the download takes too long - especially if the file is large or the connection is slow. It would be good to know if that happens on other occasions (not only our data). These kinds of timeouts can happen after a few minutes of inactivity or slow transfer, and are outside of our control on the S3 side.

It's great that the AWS SDK has resolved the issue for you. That's actually a recommended approach for working with large files on S3, since it handles retries, partial downloads, and longer transfers much more gracefully.
Another approach without having to use of a SDK / script, would be a client that allows retries such as the CLI s5cmd that we documented here, or something like Free Download Manager if you want a GUI client.

Thanks again for letting us know, and best of luck with your project!

Cheers,
Paul

[Gnative]

Hi Paul,

Nothing from my side is causing the connection to be closed as I've been regularly downloading GB files form other sources with no issue. I did wonder if you were using Cloud front and there possibly was a timeout restriction there.

As I mentioned using the AWS SDK helped to obtain the files.
Thank you for the data resource.