Speeding Up Downloads From Nintendo eShop

I wanted to actually finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Long story short, I needed to build back up my Switch game library. After purchasing a digital copy from the eShop, I saw that it would take about 7 hours to finish downloading. Maybe I should’ve bought a physical copy if I knew I was going to be impatient (but I wonder how long it’ll take to download all the updates)…

So I took to searching and I found this very helpful Reddit post. After running to the store to buy an ethernet cable and an ethernet adapter, I directly connected my Switch to my router. This increased my download speeds by quite a bit, but what really helped was running a proxy as outlined in the post.

I had a Raspberry Pi lying around, so I flashed the Raspberry Pi OS on it and did the following:

1. On the Pi, install Tinyproxy via sudo apt install tinyproxy.
2. Edit the config file: sudo nano /etc/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf. The edits I made:

   # Set the port below
   Port 8888
   
   Allow 192.168.1.0/24
   
   # For HTTPS connections
   ConnectPort 443
   ConnectPort 80
   ConnectPort 8080
   

3. Restart and enable Tinyproxy:

   $ sudo systemctl restart tinyproxy
   $ sudo systemctl enable tinyproxy
   $ sudo systemctl start tinyproxy
   $ systemctl status tinyproxy
   

4. Note your Pi’s IP with hostname -I.
5. On the Nintendo Switch, navigate to System Settings > Internet > Internet Settings > Wired Connection > Change Settings.
6. Change Proxy Settings and enter the Pi’s IP address in Server and set Port to 8888. Hit Save and test your internet connection.

I was able to reach download speeds of 211 Mbps, which was much more than the < 50 Mbps I was getting without the proxy and ethernet connection.

The whole process still took ~7 hours because I finished setting everything up 4 hours into the download. (I got sidetracked, corrupted my USB, and flashing the OS took awhile.) But I had fun, so the side quest was worth it.