DOWNLOAD IS NOT UNIFORM

[Frostwolf]

Plz help downloading a game in steam is taking a lot of time as the download keeps on stopping. For example at first it becomes 300kb/s then decrease and becoming 0 and then again becomes 300 and so on. It is taking forever to download a game

[Forcen]

This happens with ARK and Payday 2, it's by design.
Is it one of those two?

[Spawn of Totoro]

Internet connections are not uniform either. It is like a highway, there will be traffic jams and congestion that effect internet speeds.

Remember, a connection can make many hops between point A and B. All of it effecting download speeds.

[Frostwolf]

But when i download something outside of steam it doesnt happen

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Frostwolf:

But when i download something outside of steam it doesnt happen

Different routs to different places.

[cinedine]

When you download something outside of Steam you most likely don't have to share the servers upstream with some thousands of people. And you probably don't download gigabytes of data.

[Frostwolf]

So there is no option than to wait for 2days

[Satoru]

download speeds depend on several factors

1) your ISP
2) the download region selected
3) what is being downloaded
4) is it a patch
5) your anti-virus screwing it up

Steam downloads delta patches. That means only small change files are sent and then they are applied to the larger file locally. This reduces bandwidth usage. Check if your CPU and disk are being heavilyl utilized. If so, then your download issues arent really issues, its just steam waiting for the patching to finish.

Also note tha anti-virus progams are notorious for screwing up downloads