[Solved] Steam download is capped at 1.3MB/s even though I have a faster connection

[Thargor]

I am having trouble with my Steam download speed.

It is constantly capped at 1.3MB/s when I update or download a game.
My internet connection should allow up to 6MB/s.
Here is a speed test link: https://www.speedtest.net/de/result/16292572616

My drive shouldn't be the problem as it's an M.2 NVMe SSD and works fine with everything else. And it is not like my PC or even Steam is not able to achieve the faster speeds. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it jumps up to 2.4MB/s and stays there, and every download outside of Steam works fine.

I have already tried
- restarting the download/steam/pc/network
- clearing the download cache
- switching download servers to 4 different locations
- enabling and disabling the download speed cap in steam.


[Solution]
My ISP seems to throttle Steam Download Services. I used a VPN to get around this and everything works fine now. I could even disable the VPN after starting the download and the connection would still be fast until I restart Steam again.

[-=Thorax.be=-]

Same problem here, also capped around 1.2MB/s
Also did a speedtest and everything OK
currently downloading the game another way and that is going at normal speeds (~80MB/s)
Also tried switching regions / clearing cache

location : Belgium

[bidulless]

hello

You're not alone on the network downloading stuff from steam
https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/
https://i.postimg.cc/nrjvFxV2/Sans-titre.jpg

[「 RiuXeN 」]

I had teh same problem
add me, I'll tell you how I fixed it

[-=Thorax.be=-]

Solved my issue by using a VPN to download the game and then turning it off again.
ISP throttling Steam downloads i think. Turning on the VPN my speed went all the way up to 86MB/s from 1,1MB/s

[Thargor]

Originally posted by -=Thorax.be=-:

Solved my issue by using a VPN to download the game and then turning it off again.
ISP throttling Steam downloads i think. Turning on the VPN my speed went all the way up to 86MB/s from 1,1MB/s

This actually fixed it. Once I connected via VPN it worked fine. So VPN seems to be the way to go and I'm going to check my ISP contract to see if they are even allowed to throttle me like this.

Thank you for your help

Originally posted by bidulless:

hello

You're not alone on the network downloading stuff from steam
https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/
https://i.postimg.cc/nrjvFxV2/Sans-titre.jpg

Well, I think Steam is quite capable of providing speeds higher than 1.3MB/s most of the time. And as I said above, as soon as I activated the VPN, the speed shot up. But thank you for your help anyway.