Download starts fast but then slow to a crawl.

[TypeDefinition]

Whenever I download something, the download will start off well, at a few mb/s and even up to 40+Mb/s, but after about a minute it slows down to less then 1mb/s, and I have to restart Steam hopping servers from other countries.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Publicado originalmente por Batman3468:

Hello, I am facing the same issue. The download starts at 2Mb/s and then goes to 40Kb/s and doesn't increase again.
I have tried to disable antivirus, change regions, clear cache etc, but nothing seems to be working so far.
Any solutions to this?

Try all download servers until you find one with speeds you are happy with.

There are over 130 to try.

Any server near me was slow as dirt. Nearest does not always equal faster.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9498-WPDF-3220

Today, S. Korea was better for me. Yesterday, Sweden was better. Btw... I'm on the East Coast.

[Guess wo is back? mu3rt3]

I barely got the same issue. Starting good at 10 MB/s and after barely a minute the download ist stopping or slowing down to a couple of kb/s. After a short period (seconds) it increasing again. This schema is repeating the whole time until the download is finished. Changing content server didn't helped at all. Same issue reported some friends in another country...totally annoying

[chantey]

For my Australia experience, all Aus servers were <1MB/s.
I switched to Central Asia and am now getting 9.2MB/s

[TickleMeNani]

Change region to France - Paris. this just fixed it for me thanks to another thread i seen. ( i live in Aus, so it makes no sense that this works but it does)

[WhiteKong13]

Publicado originalmente por -=Link=-:

If anyone is still reading this thread, I found that the windows 10 Netflix App caused this issue for me. After uninstalling Netflix it worked perfectly

Weirdly enough this actually worked for me also. Thanks

[Boingo Boi Actual]

Something that worked for me.
I don't usually use a VPN, but the moment I connected to one my download speeds went from ~1-100 Kb/s to 6 Mb/s.
Changing the download region also increased the speed even more.

[Iceira]

Publicado originalmente por Lovecraft's cat:

Something that worked for me.
I don't usually use a VPN, but the moment I connected to one my download speeds went from ~1-100 Kb/s to 6 Mb/s.
Changing the download region also increased the speed even more.

yeah this is know as either your setup problem or ISP has congestion or throtle the speed

and VPN has higher service priority so ( isp has issue )

VPN is not a solution you still go though same network to the new network.
( this is just a proof in it self ) not a steam issue but you and isp only.

and any Network engineer can confirm this. ( its not even steam problem if your ISP has Routing path issue to steam. over crowded network or isp partner doing it. )

maybe you should talk nicely to your isp and said exatly what you did here.

[Manuel]

It is mostly due to the download region. I had it in Portugal, as it was in default, and changed to Paris - France, and it downloaded much faster, and after a while it slowed down.

I changed again, this time for Berlin - Germany, and happened the same thing.

It has nothing to do with the CPU, but with the bandwidth itself, and with its provider.

[ุLukencio™]

I had the same issue but i uninstalled netflix and it's working well for now

[Coolshadow21]

Publicado originalmente por Lukencio™:

I had the same issue but i uninstalled netflix and it's working well for now

how do i uninstall netflix?

[gigas7]

same was happening to me download started at 40-50mbps but drops to 6-7...but i changed the servers..it works better....in my country they had servers in 4 cities..i choose the next closest city....now its constant at 20 mbps but still slow

[RHLM bbcita]

manga

[Ewenomi]

Publicado originalmente por Gomenasai:

Steam, settings, download, download region

I have to agree with this assessment.
I did some testing on this today downloading TES: SE
Download would start at 4-5MB then degrade to sub 512KB
Restarting my computer would cause a repeat, but at least I would get a bit of upspeed for a bit.
Then I changed from US Phoenix to US Pittsburg and the rest downloaded at 4-5.5MB without a hitch.
Try changing to a different download server till you find one that works for you.
My guess is that they start throttling when they get congested.

[Iceira]

Do not mixup own local disk at 100% usage , then network DL will be reduce to whatever you can keep up with, have near full disk or other app use own disk will effect performance.

ps.
use windows Resource manager, not steam DL app, steam only focus on own DL not what disk is doing with run at 100% ( dont have other app running at disk , aka many things like deframentation or know windows backup kick in same time you just DL this is know as double task in the old days , same as play a game while downloading on same disk )

pretty sure always one steam user that do that, or dont know such, cant say what everyone doing here.

same with a laptop not in full performance thats also reduce its performance on the disk.

[CommonCentz]

I tried using a VPN and it instantly helped with speeds. I use an older DSL connection so I do not get very fast speeds, nothing over 2MB/s, so I need all I can get. Using Express VPN connection shot the speeds back up from literally under 50 KB/s. However, I do caution that it may dip down from time to time, but stays fairly consistent. I think like others have said, ISPs are throttling traffic, specially during peak usage hours, like in the evenings after everyone gets home from work, so like 5pm-9pm I have noticed this. Also on weekends sometimes too.

Edit: After some experimentation, it may not fix it entirely, as I was then dropping down to slow speeds even with a VPN, but I am not sure what exactly the reason was. Rebooting also seemed to help immensely. As after I did so, got max speeds for me, but without using the VPN. It could be that the throttling window had closed for me and no longer was happening. So I think best approach with this issue is to use all the different suggestions in conjunction with each other until you get back to acceptable speeds. I say that because I cleared the download cache and switched download servers multiple time, as well as using a VPN, and eventually restarted the PC. But I do think a major contributor to this issue is throttling from ISPs, as I have noticed this at other times but with minor things so I didnt worry about it or try to fix it.