Improve experience downloading C# dependencies over slow internet

Environment data

dotnet --info output:

.NET Command Line Tools (1.0.0-preview2-1-003177)

Product Information:
 Version:            1.0.0-preview2-1-003177
 Commit SHA-1 hash:  a2df9c2576

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     ubuntu
 OS Version:  16.04
 OS Platform: Linux
 RID:         ubuntu.16.04-x64

VS Code version: 1.8.1 C# Extension version: 1.6.1

Steps to reproduce

1. Upgrade C# Extension and reload VSCode
2. Open a C# file in a .NET Core project to trigger updating C# dependencies

Expected behavior

The update should finish in a reasonable time.

Actual behavior

In nearly all recent versions of updates of C# Extension, the downloading of the following packages is extremely slow and very often cannot finish, sometimes simply fails with connection error. I have to restart VSCode and again trigger the update. It has to re-download the files that have been successfully downloaded in the previous session. The following is the log hanging overnight.

Updating C# dependencies...
Platform: linux, x86_64, name=ubuntu, version=16.04 (ubuntu.16.04-x64)

Downloading package 'Mono Runtime (Linux / x64)' (1549 KB) .................... Done!
Downloading package 'Mono Framework Assemblies' (5828 KB) .................... Done!
Downloading package 'OmniSharp (Mono 4.6)' (16807 KB) .................... Done!
Downloading package '.NET Core Debugger (Ubuntu 16.04 / x64)' (47391 KB) ...

I wonder if it’s possible to allow alternative download links or cache what is done?

[karldodd]

Same issue. I guess this happens a lot in China, which is supposed to be a big market for VSCode : )

Please switch to a China-friendly link, or at least improve the download experience. Thanks.

[Mailaender]

At the moment it is painfully slow even with a fast DSL connection.