Stem won't allow parallel downloads

[Benny Lafitte]

Steam won't let me do 2 downloads at 1 time it supends every other download until cureent download is finished, is this normal?

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by Gam3rMast3r:

Steam won't let me do 2 downloads at 1 time it supends every other download until cureent download is finished, is this normal?

Yes. They claim it's a feature.

[Benny Lafitte]

Right, but I think sometime this year or last year I had more than 5 downloads running

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by Gam3rMast3r:

Right, but I think sometime this year or last year I had more than 5 downloads running

In their typical ham-handed approach, Valve tried to add a bandwidth throttle. This "one download at a time" nonsense appeared around the same time.

[aiusepsi]

Games on Steam are moving over to a new & improved content system. Rather than downloading multiple games at a time, it uses multiple connections to download one game at a time.

You should note that multiple games will still take the same amount of time to all download, but each individual game will be done sooner under such a system.

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

Games on Steam are moving over to a new & improved content system. Rather than downloading multiple games at a time, it uses multiple connections to download one game at a time.

You should note that multiple games will still take the same amount of time to all download, but each individual game will be done sooner under such a system.

That sounds suspiciously like a bittorrent-like system. Got a link?

[Netshroud]

It's not bittorrent, but it does chunk the downloads into smaller pieces which it can download concurrently.

The only public documentation is https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamPipe

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by dirrtygsharp:

In their typical ham-handed approach, Valve tried to add a bandwidth throttle. This "one download at a time" nonsense appeared around the same time.

The throttle appeared several months after steampipe started.

There isn't any advantage at having 10 games downloading at 1Mb each or 1 game at a time at 10Mb each. If anything you can finish downloading individual games faster, but to get them all it would still take the same amount of time.

[Marble]

Is there any reason why you would want 5 games downloading in parallel? It's not going to make the overall download any faster, and if it does 1 game at a time, that 1 game will finish much faster than if it was downloading multiple games at once, and you could play this game while the others download.

[Tatsur0]

Actually downloads pause when you're running a Steam game. But as others pointed out it's intentional. We're just spoiled from Valve's generosity from before and some of us feel entitled.

[Marble]

They pause automatically to prevent them from interfering with the game. You can resume them if you want and carry on playing if your system can handle it. It usually hits the disk and bandwidth hard on some systems.

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by Canti:

Is there any reason why you would want 5 games downloading in parallel? It's not going to make the overall download any faster, and if it does 1 game at a time, that 1 game will finish much faster than if it was downloading multiple games at once, and you could play this game while the others download.

If I was pulling five different games from five different content servers then yes.

[Crocomire]

Its better one than 2, sucvr != host.

[aiusepsi]

Right now, I'm downloading Fallout New Vegas, and it's downloading from ten content servers.

You can see how many servers it's using by opening the Steam dev console (type steam://open/console into the Windows run box (Windows key + r)) and typing:

download_sources

Download sources:
- host valve250.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve250.cs.steampowered.com, cell 129, CS (#69), 1 connections 
- host valve137.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve137.cs.steampowered.com, cell 4, CS (#112), 1 connections 
- host valve227.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve227.cs.steampowered.com, cell 4, CS (#16), 1 connections 
- host valve257.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve257.cs.steampowered.com, cell 4, CS (#74), 1 connections 
- host valve192.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve192.cs.steampowered.com, cell 4, CS (#45), 1 connections 
- host valve193.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve193.cs.steampowered.com, cell 4, CS (#46), 1 connections 
- host valve15.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve15.cs.steampowered.com, cell 15, CS (#98), 1 connections 
- host valve80.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve80.cs.steampowered.com, cell 15, CS (#61), 1 connections 
- host valve191.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve191.cs.steampowered.com, cell 15, CS (#4), 1 connections 
- host valve255.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve255.cs.steampowered.com, cell 15, CS (#72), 1 connections 
- host valve18.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve18.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#100), 0 connections 
- host valve51.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve51.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#138), 0 connections 
- host valve236.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve236.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#59), 0 connections 
- host valve245.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve245.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#55), 0 connections 
- host valve258.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve258.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#75), 0 connections 
- host valve88.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve88.cs.steampowered.com, cell 14, CS (#145), 0 connections 
- host valve19.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve19.cs.steampowered.com, cell 40, CS (#101), 0 connections 
- host valve242.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve242.cs.steampowered.com, cell 37, CS (#52), 0 connections 
- host valve194.cs.steampowered.com, vhost valve194.cs.steampowered.com, cell 86, CS (#47), 0 connections 
Download jobs:
- type CS, chunks: download = 4899, outstanding = 1, deferred = 16, succeeded = 12, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4884, outstanding = 1, deferred = 32, succeeded = 17, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4832, outstanding = 1, deferred = 117, succeeded = 21, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4835, outstanding = 1, deferred = 59, succeeded = 19, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4816, outstanding = 1, deferred = 145, succeeded = 18, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4825, outstanding = 1, deferred = 109, succeeded = 17, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4760, outstanding = 1, deferred = 193, succeeded = 13, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4829, outstanding = 1, deferred = 97, succeeded = 13, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4848, outstanding = 1, deferred = 75, succeeded = 10, failed = 0 
- type CS, chunks: download = 4864, outstanding = 1, deferred = 13, succeeded = 8, failed = 0 

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

Right now, I'm downloading Fallout New Vegas, and it's downloading from ten content servers.

You can see how many servers it's using by opening the Steam dev console (type steam://open/console into the Windows run box (Windows key + r)) and typing:

download_sources
(snip server list for space)

What's this? Actual helpful information in Helps & Tips? I'm shocked. ;)

Thank you for your post.

[NiRuS]

LOLiLol