Download rate is 0 Kbps while downloading

Komrade Dec 29, 2019 @ 6:44pm

There's still disk activity when the internet drops to 0. That’s a normal Steam download, it’s highly compressed and your connection is just waiting for the drive and cpu to finish unpacking and allocating files. It’s not a bug, it’s how downloads work.

#1

AMDphreak Jan 3, 2020 @ 9:40pm

Originally posted by notkennyS:
There's still disk activity when the internet drops to 0. That’s a normal Steam download, it’s highly compressed and your connection is just waiting for the drive and cpu to finish unpacking and allocating files. It’s not a bug, it’s how downloads work.

Actually, this is not the case. The graph shows that it is downloading. Also, it stays at zero while downloading (but occasionally displays the correct download rate briefly, but, according to what kind of internal logic, I do not know). Also, CPU decompression and disk speeds are typically much faster than internet. Mine in particular are fast. Granted, my internet speed is very high, but disk speeds for HDD via USB 3.0 are well above 100 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write (and the internet maxes out at ~30 MB/s). My CPU is a high-end CPU (circa 2017). Also, my disk speeds are irrelevant, because the app should have all of the downloads BUFFERED on the system disk, which is an SSD, with very high write speeds (600 MB/s). This in addition to the download buffer in RAM. My system has 16 GB of RAM, so there is sufficient space in RAM to simply hold the entire download before temporarily storing it to a disk buffer, and there is almost enough space to simply decompress the file directly from RAM.

Last edited by AMDphreak; Jan 3, 2020 @ 9:44pm

#2

Xaelath Jan 3, 2020 @ 10:22pm

Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:
Originally posted by notkennyS:
There's still disk activity when the internet drops to 0. That’s a normal Steam download, it’s highly compressed and your connection is just waiting for the drive and cpu to finish unpacking and allocating files. It’s not a bug, it’s how downloads work.

Actually, this is not the case. The graph shows that it is downloading. Also, it stays at zero while downloading (but occasionally displays the correct download rate briefly, but, according to what kind of internal logic, I do not know). Also, CPU decompression and disk speeds are typically much faster than internet. Mine in particular are fast. Granted, my internet speed is very high, but disk speeds for HDD via USB 3.0 are well above 100 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write (and the internet maxes out at ~30 MB/s). My CPU is a high-end CPU (circa 2017). Also, my disk speeds are irrelevant, because the app should have all of the downloads BUFFERED on the system disk, which is an SSD, with very high write speeds (600 MB/s). This in addition to the download buffer in RAM. My system has 16 GB of RAM, so there is sufficient space in RAM to simply hold the entire download before temporarily storing it to a disk buffer, and there is almost enough space to simply decompress the file directly from RAM.

Try changing download region see if it works.
Otherwise the bug may occur on the software which is related to PC registry issues or such.

#3

Komrade Jan 4, 2020 @ 1:09pm

Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:
Originally posted by notkennyS:
There's still disk activity when the internet drops to 0. That’s a normal Steam download, it’s highly compressed and your connection is just waiting for the drive and cpu to finish unpacking and allocating files. It’s not a bug, it’s how downloads work.

Actually, this is not the case. The graph shows that it is downloading. Also, it stays at zero while downloading (but occasionally displays the correct download rate briefly, but, according to what kind of internal logic, I do not know). Also, CPU decompression and disk speeds are typically much faster than internet. Mine in particular are fast. Granted, my internet speed is very high, but disk speeds for HDD via USB 3.0 are well above 100 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write (and the internet maxes out at ~30 MB/s). My CPU is a high-end CPU (circa 2017). Also, my disk speeds are irrelevant, because the app should have all of the downloads BUFFERED on the system disk, which is an SSD, with very high write speeds (600 MB/s). This in addition to the download buffer in RAM. My system has 16 GB of RAM, so there is sufficient space in RAM to simply hold the entire download before temporarily storing it to a disk buffer, and there is almost enough space to simply decompress the file directly from RAM.

It is the case, actually. Your internet is around 200mbps, your hard drive is not that fast, and it's not just unpacking, it has to reallocate files from one folder to another as well. That's a normal looking Steam download. there's disk activity when the blue line goes down.

#4

AMDphreak Jan 4, 2020 @ 2:33pm

Originally posted by notkennyS:
Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:

Actually, this is not the case. The graph shows that it is downloading. Also, it stays at zero while downloading (but occasionally displays the correct download rate briefly, but, according to what kind of internal logic, I do not know). Also, CPU decompression and disk speeds are typically much faster than internet. Mine in particular are fast. Granted, my internet speed is very high, but disk speeds for HDD via USB 3.0 are well above 100 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write (and the internet maxes out at ~30 MB/s). My CPU is a high-end CPU (circa 2017). Also, my disk speeds are irrelevant, because the app should have all of the downloads BUFFERED on the system disk, which is an SSD, with very high write speeds (600 MB/s). This in addition to the download buffer in RAM. My system has 16 GB of RAM, so there is sufficient space in RAM to simply hold the entire download before temporarily storing it to a disk buffer, and there is almost enough space to simply decompress the file directly from RAM.
It is the case, actually. Your internet is around 200mbps, your hard drive is not that fast, and it's not just unpacking, it has to reallocate files from one folder to another as well. That's a normal looking Steam download. there's disk activity when the blue line goes down.

You're still wrong. You apparently didn't even look at the screenshot. Notice how the BLUE BARS at the right are NON-ZERO. The corresponding "CURRENT" speed is 0.

My internet speed is not 200 mbps <-- what is that anyway? That is millibits per second. My speed is not even 200 MEGAbits per second either. It is closer to 300 Mbps (Mb/s), which when converted to BYTES is 30 MB/s, just as I stated. USB 3.0 interface's maximum transfer rate is 5 Gbps which is 625 MB/s which is WELL OVER 30 MB/s. The actual disk write speed (measured) is 21.9 MB/s (Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test on MacOS), and this is not much of a disparity when measured against the actual download rate, so the download buffer in RAM will hold the difference (the backlogged data). You would need to ask Steam developers whether their download procedure uses a RAM buffer, but any sensible system-level programmer (and they really are sensible programmers at this company) would use a buffered download library or make their own buffer to hold the download while decompressing it.

Last edited by AMDphreak; Jan 4, 2020 @ 2:37pm

#5

Komrade Jan 4, 2020 @ 2:35pm

Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:
Originally posted by notkennyS:
It is the case, actually. Your internet is around 200mbps, your hard drive is not that fast, and it's not just unpacking, it has to reallocate files from one folder to another as well. That's a normal looking Steam download. there's disk activity when the blue line goes down.

You're still wrong. You apparently didn't even look at the screenshot. Notice how the BLUE BARS at the right are NON-ZERO. The corresponding "CURRENT" speed is 0.

My internet speed is not 200 mbps <-- what is that anyway? That is millibits per second. My speed is not even 200 MEGAbits per second either. It is closer to 300 Mbps (Mb/s), which when converted to BYTES is 30 MB/S, just as I stated. USB 3.0 interface's maximum transfer rate is 5 Gbps which is 625 MB/s which is WELL OVER 30 MB/s. The actual disk speed (measured) is 21.9 MB/s (Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test on MacOS), and this is not much disparity to the actual download rate, so the download buffer in RAM is enough to hold the remainder of the data that isn't being written immediately. You would need to ask Steam developers whether their download procedure uses a RAM buffer, but any sensible system-level programmer (and they really are sensible programmers at this company) would use a buffered download library or make their own buffer to hold the download while decompressing it.

The download screen shows your connection near 200mbps. "28MB/S peak" *8 = 224

I'm not sure why you keep mentioning USB 3.0 transfer rates either. Your download looks completely normal.

#6

Xero_Daxter Jan 4, 2020 @ 9:19pm

Look at Task Manager. Is the Disk Usage (between memory and network) 99 or 100 percent?

#7

Komrade Jan 4, 2020 @ 9:24pm

Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:
Originally posted by notkennyS:
It is the case, actually. Your internet is around 200mbps, your hard drive is not that fast, and it's not just unpacking, it has to reallocate files from one folder to another as well. That's a normal looking Steam download. there's disk activity when the blue line goes down.

You're still wrong. You apparently didn't even look at the screenshot. Notice how the BLUE BARS at the right are NON-ZERO. The corresponding "CURRENT" speed is 0.

That’s cause it finished downloading. If you look to the right, “Downloaded 2.4GB/2.4GB”

#8

AMDphreak Jan 14, 2020 @ 11:43pm

Originally posted by notkennyS:
Originally posted by Ryan AMDphreak:

You're still wrong. You apparently didn't even look at the screenshot. Notice how the BLUE BARS at the right are NON-ZERO. The corresponding "CURRENT" speed is 0.
That’s cause it finished downloading. If you look to the right, “Downloaded 2.4GB/2.4GB”

It shows 0 MB/s while downloading for 99% of the time AS I WATCH THE DOWNLOAD.

I reinstalled Windows, and it no longer has this bug. There is something fishy going on with the syscalls/API calls to Windows. Steam can't detect that they're busted. Either way it shouldn't be graphing a non-zero download speed WHILE showing a bogus 0 MB/s download number.

#9

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