Feature Request: Steam + Torrent download

[Odilbert]

Just an idea...

I'm currently waiting for Tomb Raider + Borderlands 2 + Skyrim having finished downloading. My Internet connection should give me 10 MBytes/s, but I only get 740kB/s.

I understand, that Steam has do distribute the total server bandwidth to all downloading clients. But this could be improved, if a user could optionally activate a torrent switch in his download options. This option would activate the use of an additional download stream via torrent connections directly from other users, to accelerate the main download stream from the server. At the same time the local files will be provided for uploading to other users. After the download queue has finished, the torrent upload will be automatically disabled again.

I think this would be a quite easy-to-use and simple mechanism to accelerate the overall download performance while saving traffic of the steam server. The user get their files faster, valve saves money... sounds like a win-win-situation.

Well... I would really love a feature like that... then I could already start traveling through Pandora... oh wait... borderland's done... gotta go... :-)

[Satoru]

If the content servers are not near you, a torrent is not going to magically make your download faster

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Or Valve could just get more servers. I don't know of anybody that would want to become "seeders" on a client where they actually paid for their product. I know I wouldn't want to waste my bandwidth resource for such a crazy move.

[eram]

Steam already gives you max download speed. Tested on a 160Mb connection and i wouldn't want my connection being used to serve games to other users. Upload restrictions are part of many isp deals and all that stuff.

[Silicon Vampire]

There are also ISPs that block file-sharing activity.

[Odilbert]

Originally posted by Satoru:

If the content servers are not near you, a torrent is not going to magically make your download faster

The torrent download could be an additional download stream. It would just make it faster.

Originally posted by Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel:

Or Valve could just get more servers. I don't know of anybody that would want to become "seeders" on a client where they actually paid for their product. I know I wouldn't want to waste my bandwidth resource for such a crazy move.

I usually don't get full speed.You could just seed while you're downloading. If it accelerates my download I would do this.

Originally posted by Silicon Vampire:

There are also ISPs that block file-sharing activity.

Who cares? Most don't or just limit bandwidth for torrent packets after a few gigs. No reason for banning a feature like that.

[eram]

Torrents may never be used, just making sure you understand this before the thread carries on. User upload will probably not be used at any point to serve game files to other users. Just so you know.

Try other content servers to see if you can get full speed, i know for sure you can get max speed up to at least 160Mb and probably a lot more.

[aiusepsi]

Thing is, when people say things like "Valve should get more servers" they're somewhat neglecting the fact that they have an awful lot of them already. For instance, you can get a list of the 50 closest servers to the UK - London region like so: http://valve254.cs.steampowered.com/serverlist/4/50/

The ones labelled "CDN" are actually third-party CDN providers, so each CDN entry is another globally-distributed entire network of servers in its own right.

If you're having download speed troubles, your problem probably isn't a lack of server provision.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

Thing is, when people say things like "Valve should get more servers" they're somewhat neglecting the fact that they have an awful lot of them already.

It's the 'throw money at it until it's solved' philosophy. It doesn't solve every problem though.
Specially network/capacity issues.