Internet and wifi disconnects, instability when downloading within Steam

[Bobar bubbub]

When downloading or updating a game in Steam, my throughput drops to zero. My connection to the router remains intact, however I lose the ability to send and receive data. Disconnecting from my wifi network and reconnecting fixes it temporarily, until Steam picks up the download again. As soon as Steam starts downloading anything, the issue occurs at a seemingly random time following this- either immediately or within about five minutes. I only ever experience this issue in Steam. All my drivers are up to date. I have tried three different wireless adapters and two different routers.

My current setup is:
Windows 7
Rosewill RNX-N180UBE
Apple Airport Extreme

For many months I have had this issue but have not made a thread as I have begrudgingly powered through it, however this is time consuming and frustrating. Downloading small pieces of a game, waiting for it to lose throughput, me manually disconnecting from my wifi and reconnecting is unacceptable. If not for my prior appreciation of Valve software, I would be much more dismissive of Steam as a viable service. This bug does in fact break my heart a little.

I have also been distracted by trying the myriad of suggestions in this thread:
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/846938350936460387/

For the record, I have tried:
Disabling IPv6
Disabling network sharing
Limited my bandwidth within Steam
Deleting the "appcache" folder

So far, the only response from a Valve employee in that thread with 49 replies is the following from henryg on Nov 14, 2013:
"Steam downloads games using the same techniques as your web browser (standard HTTP), it's just downloading much more data than a typical web page. It appears that certain brands/models of networking equipment start to fail when you download too much data at once. As pr0x suggests, a simple workaround is to change your Steam settings to limit the amount of download bandwidth that Steam tries to use."

I have throttled my speed in my Steam settings down to as low as 512 kb/s and I still experience the issue. I regularly achieve 3+ mb/s download speeds in Chrome and Firefox on the same system, so needless to say this did not solve my issue.

I am confident that this is a Steam issue. Given the severity of the problem and the number of people experiencing it, I would expect some more help from the developers.

Thanks.

[kiselniymalchik]

pewpewpew

[symphony]

I got the same problem m8. thinking it's my wifi card. no issues with ethernet

[Pengydesu]

Same thing here. Im guessing they still haven't fixed it... Any luck for you guys?

[goobygoobster]

Are any of you on Virgin Media? I can't download for more than 1 second until my internet d/c's.

[Heir Mullen]

Was playing Fallout 3 last night when the game froze. Locked my system down so i restarted and Steam decides to cut off my wifi everytime i attempt to reinstall and update. Stops at 18MB everytime. I looked in the services page and saw my wifi service in Windows is being stopped when Steam launches. Even restarting it has not fixed the issue and the Steam update hangs...very frustrating. I've had this problem before but it sorted itself out, which isnt happening this time.

[polaramine]

i'm having the same problem right now...