Why are downloads on Steam so terrible.

[Yessirski]

I just did the Ookla speedtest and I have 370 mbps downlaod and 255 upload. Why then, do I barely peak at 42 Mb/s download and on average like 3Mb/s with lots of interruptions and random gaps in downloading. I've used other services to download games like Origin and on there I can download a 100 gb game in like 30 minutes, but on Steam recently it takes hours to download anything larger than 50. I feel like it used to be much faster but recently it's been awful.

[Crashed]

PaulKrawitz の投稿を引用：

1&1 All-Net-Flat XXL Max
Unlimited Data - 5G - 300 mbit/s

Tenda 5G03 5G NR LTE WLAN LAN Router for Nano SIM

Cat 8 Network Cable, 40 Gbps High Speed 2000 MHz S/FTP Ethernet Cable

---

My internet speed is somewhere between 50-270 mbit/s depending on server, time, load, and weather.


My Steam speed is between 20-160 mbit/s, speed seems to depend on Valve's mood...

CAT8 cable is way overkill for home use. You can easily pull off 2.5 gigabit Ethernet over short distances of Cat5e, supposedly even up to 100 meters.

[Sigma957]

Your speed can't be 370 megabits per second if you're downloading 42 megabytes per second. That's a 400 megabit plus connection.

[PepeVonZdepe]

Have Steam downloads slowed down recently?
Have none of the usual fixes helped (restarting, changing servers, etc)?
These will need you to have all downloads paused (unpause the download after entering the command) and the steam console opened (openable with steam://open/console in your web browser).
HTTP2 disabling
Windows:
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformWindows 0
Linux:
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformLinux 0
MacOS doesn't seem to have HTTP2 toggles in Steam.
For some reason, HTTP2 causes download slowdowns in certain cases. For me, this caused downloads to go (on Windows) from about 10-20MB/s to my connection's maximum, around 60MB/s. A pretty huge jump, eh!
Now, there's no guarantees that these convars will stay in the future, but if we help Valve fix the HTTP2 downloads being slow in the first place then disabling it shouldn't be necessary.
It also doesn't seem to matter whether you have the client beta in use or not.
More connections at a time
There's also a second convar, which applies to all platforms:
@fDownloadRateImprovementToAddAnotherConnection 1.0
This convar makes steam connect to lots more servers (up to 10, usually connects to around 3, seems to be hard capped in code with no convars to change it) which can theoretically improve download speeds. It might also make them a lot worse. You can use the command download_sources to see various download stats.
Saving these settings
These settings don't save automatically. You'll need to create a steam_dev.cfg file in your steam install directory (Linux: /home/USER/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg, Windows (usually): C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam_dev.cfg), and place the lines you used inside (one convar per line).

[PepeVonZdepe]

Original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/16e1l4h/slow_steam_downloads_try_this/

[Yasuho]

hey why aint my steam opening i have to use the steam browser and i cant play my games

[Rin]

If you live in murica then the likelihood of your ISP throttling Steam is about 99% accurate or anything else for that matter because they bribed their way to be able to do just that.

[Crashed]

PepeVonZdepe の投稿を引用：

Original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/16e1l4h/slow_steam_downloads_try_this/

Is it possible the client is trying to multiplex those three streams over a single HTTP/2 connection instead of making three HTTP/1.1 connections?

[crunchyfrog]

PaulKrawitz の投稿を引用：

1&1 All-Net-Flat XXL Max
Unlimited Data - 5G - 300 mbit/s

Tenda 5G03 5G NR LTE WLAN LAN Router for Nano SIM

Cat 8 Network Cable, 40 Gbps High Speed 2000 MHz S/FTP Ethernet Cable

---

My internet speed is somewhere between 50-270 mbit/s depending on server, time, load, and weather.


My Steam speed is between 20-160 mbit/s, speed seems to depend on Valve's mood...

No, not at all.

It depends on the game itself and how it's structured, and ALL your system resources. Not just your net speed.

Again, as games via Steam are both encrypted and compressed, this means typically that games download a chunk, stop downloading while it unpacks and sorts the data before writing to it's final destination. Because of this, some users get it round their neck thinking something's wrong when it stops and starts or goes slower than other services.

The point here is that not only does it depend on your hard drives used, your RAM, CPU, I/O and more, but it can also vary from game to game somewhat.

Also, you need to remember the cardinal rule - THE REGION DANCE.

As downloads are NOT like online gaming (ping isn't really relevant as it's a one way download largely), this means it doesn't matter where in the world you download from. So users often get this round their necks too. They think if it's congested locally, then choosing somewhere else nearby is what you do.

Of course, it's obvious that if your locale is congested and busy, then it's highly likely neighbouring areas are too.

What is best to do is go to Google and lookup global timezones. Find somewhere, say, between 2 to 4 am in the morning. Pick any of those countries and find the best one. Done.

[Crashed]

crunchyfrog の投稿を引用：

PaulKrawitz の投稿を引用：

1&1 All-Net-Flat XXL Max
Unlimited Data - 5G - 300 mbit/s

Tenda 5G03 5G NR LTE WLAN LAN Router for Nano SIM

Cat 8 Network Cable, 40 Gbps High Speed 2000 MHz S/FTP Ethernet Cable

---

My internet speed is somewhere between 50-270 mbit/s depending on server, time, load, and weather.


My Steam speed is between 20-160 mbit/s, speed seems to depend on Valve's mood...

No, not at all.

It depends on the game itself and how it's structured, and ALL your system resources. Not just your net speed.

Again, as games via Steam are both encrypted and compressed, this means typically that games download a chunk, stop downloading while it unpacks and sorts the data before writing to it's final destination. Because of this, some users get it round their neck thinking something's wrong when it stops and starts or goes slower than other services.

The point here is that not only does it depend on your hard drives used, your RAM, CPU, I/O and more, but it can also vary from game to game somewhat.

Also, you need to remember the cardinal rule - THE REGION DANCE.

As downloads are NOT like online gaming (ping isn't really relevant as it's a one way download largely), this means it doesn't matter where in the world you download from. So users often get this round their necks too. They think if it's congested locally, then choosing somewhere else nearby is what you do.

Of course, it's obvious that if your locale is congested and busy, then it's highly likely neighbouring areas are too.

What is best to do is go to Google and lookup global timezones. Find somewhere, say, between 2 to 4 am in the morning. Pick any of those countries and find the best one. Done.

I do believe the client does have a bit of a buffer. Not that big because it's still 32-bit so it may still do both downloading and unpacking as long as the buffer doesn't overrun. If you watch the download graph you can often see both network and disk activity.
Some updates do stall the download considerably as a relatively small patch results in modifying multi-GB data files.

[crunchyfrog]

Crashed の投稿を引用：

crunchyfrog の投稿を引用：

No, not at all.

It depends on the game itself and how it's structured, and ALL your system resources. Not just your net speed.

Again, as games via Steam are both encrypted and compressed, this means typically that games download a chunk, stop downloading while it unpacks and sorts the data before writing to it's final destination. Because of this, some users get it round their neck thinking something's wrong when it stops and starts or goes slower than other services.

The point here is that not only does it depend on your hard drives used, your RAM, CPU, I/O and more, but it can also vary from game to game somewhat.

Also, you need to remember the cardinal rule - THE REGION DANCE.

As downloads are NOT like online gaming (ping isn't really relevant as it's a one way download largely), this means it doesn't matter where in the world you download from. So users often get this round their necks too. They think if it's congested locally, then choosing somewhere else nearby is what you do.

Of course, it's obvious that if your locale is congested and busy, then it's highly likely neighbouring areas are too.

What is best to do is go to Google and lookup global timezones. Find somewhere, say, between 2 to 4 am in the morning. Pick any of those countries and find the best one. Done.

I do believe the client does have a bit of a buffer. Not that big because it's still 32-bit so it may still do both downloading and unpacking as long as the buffer doesn't overrun. If you watch the download graph you can often see both network and disk activity.
Some updates do stall the download considerably as a relatively small patch results in modifying multi-GB data files.

I don't doubt that some do especially on updates as there's more work to be done than just straight downloading. You're patching and working on existing files whereas a straight download doesn't do that.

As for the buffer, I can't say as I've not looked.

[MonkehMaster]

PepeVonZdepe の投稿を引用：

Have Steam downloads slowed down recently?
Have none of the usual fixes helped (restarting, changing servers, etc)?
These will need you to have all downloads paused (unpause the download after entering the command) and the steam console opened (openable with steam://open/console in your web browser).
HTTP2 disabling
Windows:
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformWindows 0
Linux:
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformLinux 0
MacOS doesn't seem to have HTTP2 toggles in Steam.
For some reason, HTTP2 causes download slowdowns in certain cases. For me, this caused downloads to go (on Windows) from about 10-20MB/s to my connection's maximum, around 60MB/s. A pretty huge jump, eh!
Now, there's no guarantees that these convars will stay in the future, but if we help Valve fix the HTTP2 downloads being slow in the first place then disabling it shouldn't be necessary.
It also doesn't seem to matter whether you have the client beta in use or not.
More connections at a time
There's also a second convar, which applies to all platforms:
@fDownloadRateImprovementToAddAnotherConnection 1.0
This convar makes steam connect to lots more servers (up to 10, usually connects to around 3, seems to be hard capped in code with no convars to change it) which can theoretically improve download speeds. It might also make them a lot worse. You can use the command download_sources to see various download stats.
Saving these settings
These settings don't save automatically. You'll need to create a steam_dev.cfg file in your steam install directory (Linux: /home/USER/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg, Windows (usually): C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam_dev.cfg), and place the lines you used inside (one convar per line).

you might want this in its own thread, instead of a necro-ed thread that will likely be locked.

anywho, im all for more info on this topic.

[NakiBest]

Steam is not throttling you, guys.

Your ISP, or one or their higher level ISPs is doing the throttling.
(Higher level ISP means the ISP providing Internet services to your smaller ISP.)

Also, if your HDD or SSD is (becoming) faulty that could be a reason for slow installations too.

[Cptmcawsme]

They absolutely are throttling us lol. I've downloaded the same game in steam and outside of steam. Guess which one downloads 100x faster? You got it! The one outside steam! They are a horrible company when it comes to this ♥♥♥♥. Been having this problem for ages and they refuse to fix it.

[Tito Shivan]

Cptmcawsme の投稿を引用：

They absolutely are throttling us lol. I've downloaded the same game in steam and outside of steam. Guess which one downloads 100x faster? You got it! The one outside steam! They are a horrible company when it comes to this ♥♥♥♥. Been having this problem for ages and they refuse to fix it.

You've bumped a 4 year old thread with a 4 month old comment to not prove it wrong.

If your ISP is throttling Steam of course your downloads from Steam will be slower.

[TurboQuiet]

Tried to download a 30gb game to a more than adequate ssd on a more than adequate lan connection, took the whole day. The problem is steam not the network or drive.

Ps: sorry for late post but I've seen alot of older posts saying the same thing: that it's your network or drives but that is definitely not the problem.