Wi-Fi goes down for entire house when i download games on steam

[lunarpaddle]

Hi,
my Wi-Fi goes down for about 3-7 minutes for my entire house whenever i try to download anything off of steam. I use a Netgear router and Virgin broadband. Any ideas about why this is happening / how to fix it? Thanks in advance.

[Tito Shivan]

You mean the wifi stops sending packets (but you are still connected) Or the wifi totally dropping and lost connection?

Steam can bloat the internet connection when downloading, which may hamper browsing or other downloads. Try to set your Speed connection en Steam to a lower value.

[lunarpaddle]

lost connection

[Dark Lord Satan Visit Your Bum]

My ISP does the same thing when I use a P2P program -- I have to unplug/replug the modem in order to get the connection back. I don't know what Virgin's policy regarding bandwidth hogging is (and Steam is undoubtedly a bandwidth hog), but it's possible they are manually throttling your connection whenever you use Steam to download. Either that or your modem is borked.

[H3X]

I've seen Virgin in the UK throttle bandwidth on several occasions.. currently have to use their service myself and bandwidth heavy things like media streaming or downloading from steam do get hit with it quite often. It doesn't kill the connection completely though, just slows it to a crawl.

Sounds more like your modem is acting up. Virgin had a recall of faulty power supplies for their modems recently, maybe that's the issue. Yesterday it was also down completely in my area for almost 11 hours too, so it could be regional service problems.

[HibbiJibbi]

i couldnt log on to steam, got error msg saying "make sure ur connected to internet"

not able to play any games, not offline or online

after 6 days of trying evrything, i for some reason turned wifi off.. and voila, all is normal?

the only sensible thing i can think is that they share ports somehow.. my cable is one, and the wifi is one.. evrything i did was useless, but all i had to do was shut down wifi.. something is wrong with it.. doubt this has anything to do with the modems, i think its more a limitation from steam wich ports are and can be used.. they list utorrent as a thing that is recommended to not use at same time, i think using it on laptops on the wifi shut the ports down some weird way.. only slightly reasonable reason i can guess on.. but in short terms, wifi is atm not working proper with steam somehow in my opinion

[H3X]

Yet my pc is on wifi and functions perfectly. I've never had a problem with it to be honest. utorrent may well be something that conflicts with steam, but if you're going to use it then why not use it at a different time to steam, then there's no conflict. Besides, there'd have to be a common enough fault in the hardware to warrant a recall procedure, they tend to be expensive enough to the company..

If you're trying to use wifi with steam it should be fine, as would cable. That sounds more like a configuration error somewhere..

[HibbiJibbi]

it wasnt in use for 6 days continuously, so it "locked" the ports somehow.. the laptops were off, but it still didnt open the ports they were "apparantly" using.. just saying theres something weird with the wifi and steam/other things that use ports.. cant explain it better..

i had to input a sequrity code when it started up to make steam servers recognise machine again.. weird as it had already done that the first time

im just guessing..and telling what fixed it for me.. clearly the error "here" was connected to the wifi somehow.. how i cant answer.. deactivating it made steam connect again atleast..

im aware steam should run fine on wifi, but they do recommend if ur having this issues to try cable connection, if you can try if it makes a diffrence, why not, wont change any settings or take much time.. :)

[H3X]

True, wouldn't take long to test either way out and see :) I think steam's been weird with online/offline behaviour in general lately, with aforementioned regional problems with my service I had to set steam to offline, yet when I tried to go online after the connection was fixed I got a popup telling me that I was accessing my account from a completely new computer too (strangely enough nothing from steamguard in my email either, just that popup). I'm not sure about your ports, but that authentication popup could have been an error, the last update seems to have given lots of people problems..

[HibbiJibbi]

ye the update the 14th-15th changed something, what i dont know... its ok now, i know how to fix it if it happens again, wich im fairly sure it will ^^ my ports should be default open as there is no active firewall anywhere.. theres 2 on the computer, and one in the modem, any one of those could screw you, but most people never access theire modems.. or even know they usually comes with firewall setting enabled default.. i dont know, over my head :D