Slow transfer speeds Steam Local Network Game Transfers

[Saeris]

What would be a good way of debugging slow speeds with the new transfer feature?
I'm capped at around 30 MB/s - if I cancel the transfer and proceed with a regular download, I get my usual 60-80 MB/s.

(This was tested on the Deck transferring from a Windows machine connected to 2.5GbE network.

[martino]

Open the Steam client console (steam://open/console) on the hosting client and run command "peer_content_server_status" and post the result.

Do you happen to run any LSP software, or network speed boosters ?

[Saeris]

Did the peer_content_server_status command while running a 500Mb game transfer

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 0 pending, 0 total sent, 8 total requested
- bytes : 0 bytes read from disk at 0 bytes/sec, 0 bytes sent via network at 0 bytes/sec
- TCP : 0 oustanding sends (0 bytes)
] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 0 pending, 0 total sent, 8 total requested
- bytes : 0 bytes read from disk at 0 bytes/sec, 0 bytes sent via network at 0 bytes/sec
- TCP : 0 oustanding sends (0 bytes)
] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 0 pending, 0 total sent, 8 total requested
- bytes : 0 bytes read from disk at 0 bytes/sec, 0 bytes sent via network at 0 bytes/sec
- TCP : 0 oustanding sends (0 bytes)


weirdly enough it was saying 0 during different times of the test :D


Tested again with a 50gb game and got some bits of info

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 2 pending, 509 total sent, 511 total requested
- bytes : 520.58 MB read from disk at 36.88 MB/sec, 519.33 MB sent via network at 36.94 MB/sec
- TCP : 173 oustanding sends (173.52 MB)
] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 3 pending, 611 total sent, 614 total requested
- bytes : 626.31 MB read from disk at 36.10 MB/sec, 624.85 MB sent via network at 36.09 MB/sec
- TCP : 175 oustanding sends (179.43 MB)
] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
- chunks : 3 pending, 670 total sent, 673 total requested
- bytes : 686.73 MB read from disk at 36.56 MB/sec, 685.10 MB sent via network at 36.52 MB/sec
- TCP : 179 oustanding sends (184.52 MB)


No LSP software or speed booster on this machine (fresh windows install)

[Arc]

Nguyên văn bởi martino:

Open the Steam client console (steam://open/console) on the hosting client and run command "peer_content_server_status" and post the result.

Do you happen to run any LSP software, or network speed boosters ?

Hello, and sorry to hijack the thread but is there any way to disable on-the-fly compression that happens on the server PC ?
It's needlessly bottlenecking the entire transfer process on either of my CPUs (3700X/5600X/8700) by quite a huge margin (i.e. 700Mbps top vs 1GBps networking layer)

[Apeiron]

Installing Portal 2 from desktop to Deck:

] peer_content_server_status 
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 2 pending, 863 total sent, 865 total requested
 - bytes  : 90.25 MB read from disk at 20.53 MB/sec, 62.31 MB sent via network at 11.24 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 305 oustanding sends (33.62 MB)
] peer_content_server_status 
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 1 pending, 1134 total sent, 1135 total requested
 - bytes  : 361.38 MB read from disk at 36.81 MB/sec, 151.73 MB sent via network at 13.67 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 178 oustanding sends (53.41 MB)
] peer_content_server_status 
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 2 pending, 1392 total sent, 1394 total requested
 - bytes  : 622.21 MB read from disk at 38.76 MB/sec, 242.67 MB sent via network at 13.35 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 189 oustanding sends (63.73 MB)
] peer_content_server_status 
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 3 pending, 1566 total sent, 1569 total requested
 - bytes  : 802.35 MB read from disk at 37.03 MB/sec, 303.93 MB sent via network at 13.13 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 184 oustanding sends (65.95 MB)

iperf3 log from desktop (desktop `iperf3 -s`, Deck `iperf3 -c <desktop> -R`)

-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 5201
-----------------------------------------------------------
Accepted connection from 192.168.0.6, port 51374
[  5] local 192.168.0.11 port 5201 connected to 192.168.0.6 port 51376
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  28.7 MBytes   241 Mbits/sec    0   1.85 MBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec    0   2.13 MBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  30.0 MBytes   252 Mbits/sec    0   2.84 MBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  30.0 MBytes   252 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  28.8 MBytes   241 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  28.8 MBytes   241 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  31.2 MBytes   262 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  30.0 MBytes   252 Mbits/sec    0   3.05 MBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.02  sec   301 MBytes   252 Mbits/sec    0             sender

[Baldman363]

Hey there i was having the same issue with only getting 30 MB/s. I disabled my QoS on my router and used desktop mode while transferring from my main rig. My speeds increased and i was getting between 60-95 MB/s. It is unstable but for the most part it worked much much better. Hopefully Valve will fix this issue and make it work properly in Gaming mode since it would be nice to play a game while transferring.

[Blueberry {JESUS IS LORD}]

hmm my laptop pulled 50MB/s from my desktop if i download over internet my speed is only 40 MB/s

[Kirito]

i had to manually disable wifi on my steam deck, to do this just disconnect from the wifi network, and connect via lan, ethernet, and it peaked at 111 MBs which is what i would expect. for some reason over wifi it'll only pull 20 to 30 MBs, and i know it's not my network because the deck will download straight from steam at 50 to 80 MBs over wifi. also should be noted the host pc, has 2 nvme drives, 64gb ram, and a 5800x3d 8 cores, 16 threads, cpu. the drive speed, cpu, and nic speed will matter when transferring locally. this pushed my cpu to 30% usage while only hosting the file transfer. This was also while both in gaming mode, and desktop mode. Hope this helps figure this out. Reason i had to disable my wifi connection manually is because the deck stayed connected and for some reason still preferred transferring via wifi connection.
Some other things to note, my host pc would not transfer while downloading a update, or another game. Also if u have multiple pc's you might want to check and see which pc it is choosing to transfer from. If you check on the pc on steam downloads page it will show that it is hosting a file transfer.

[Sir Warren<still alive>]

This is insane. Today I opted into the Beta client on both Windows 7 host with downloaded game and Windows 10 "client" with download in progress. Until doing so, there was no UI indication why the LAN transfer wouldn't start, it just downloaded from the CDN on the laptop.

- PC: Downloaded game, Win7 x64, 1 Gbit ethernet
- Laptop: Download started and paused, Wi-Fi (up to ~600-800 Mbps)

1. Opt-in to Beta, restart
2. Upon starting, the P2P download started automatically (I did NOT resume the download, well... OK. It's a design decision)
3. The PC fans are revving up. Up to 50% total CPU consumption → full 8 physical cores loaded. Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.8 GHz OC. Turns out it's transferring the game data!
4. The laptop load equates to 2 full threads loaded.
5. The wifi bandwidth traffic jumped up and down.

This to me looks very much like insane compression presets on the host, otherwise the CPU load cannot be explained. Two questions:
1. If it's compression, why isn't ZSTD being used? It's one of the fastest algorithms out there with more than just acceptable performance.
2. If compression's being used, are compressed game assets archives being compressed again? This can be avoided by analyzing file extensions on the first encounter for whether
a) they are in a known archive format
OR
b) the entropy analysis indicates the data is random enough to be considered compressed (chi-squared test)

In other words, on the first pass the reader compresses by default but also runs the evaluation test. If the file extension looks to have random data (=compressed) then the next files of this same extension will NOT be compressed for p2p transfer.

[Arc]

Nguyên văn bởi Sir Warren<still alive>:

...

It is a compression for sure, you can see that in the Downloads section in Steam client on client-side.
It's making this function essentially useless for most people by default.

Let alone that neither 5600X, nor 3700X or 8700 are fast enough to compress files on fly for 10Gb networking, so it is even more useless for me.

['Nelo]

Right, I was hoping to use this feature for a LAN party, as an alternative to LAN Cache, which is quite a process to set up. This seemed simple. Seems it's massively bottlenecked by the compression on the server side.

I have a spare machine with 4x 1Gbit LAN card with link aggregation, so it should be able to serve the full 4Gbit to 4 machines pulling it at 1Gbit/s. But the CPU bottomed out at about 80MB/s total for all machines.

I understand this is not the intended purpose for the feature, and still think it's a great feature, no complaints. But if it's somehow possible to turn off the compression for local transfers, that would be great.

I ended up making a local fileshare on the server, simply sharing the steamapps folder. Then copying the files to the target machines using Windows filesharing. It nicely pulled 2.5Gbit over 3 machines copying simultaneously. Much faster than the 80MB/s I was getting with local transfers, also with negligible CPU usage on the server. After copying files to clients, simply hit the install button, and it verifies local files and installs games.

[eldorel]

I can also confirm the same issue.

Tested between two moderately powerful PCs with ssd drives on wired ethernet, one with 2.5Gb/s and the other with 1Gb/s with 10Gb capable switches in between. Iperf caps out at 986Mb/s, but i'm only seeing about 150mb/s via the steam lan transfer. (there's a *very* short 250Mb/s peak at the start, but then it drops off a cliff.

Last night transferring borderlands 3 I saw 4 cores on the Host pc are capped out at 100% by the shader pregen, but the rest of the cpu is completely idle, and aside from that one example, the host and the Client CPUs are both sitting at ~30% across all cores. (testing with Satisfactory right now, and there is *no* CPU or IO bottleneck on either machine.)

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 3 pending, 19032 total sent, 19035 total requested
 - bytes  : 19.82 GB read from disk at 18.64 MB/sec, 19.72 GB sent via network at 18.59 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 96 oustanding sends (100.45 MB)

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 1 pending, 19437 total sent, 19438 total requested
 - bytes  : 20.25 GB read from disk at 18.52 MB/sec, 20.15 GB sent via network at 18.49 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 98 oustanding sends (102.63 MB)

[alamoscouts]

You're better off using Nitroshare than this horrifically bad steam implementation.

[Tech]

Any idea why this compression would have been implemented in the first place for a LAN file transfer?

Personally, my best guess is that it's a quickly hashed out repurpose of the Remote Play pipeline, which you'd obviously need compression in, and stripping that step out was missed in the code surgery.

[jdoughalias]

Had exact same issue. I double checked settings everything looked good...restarted steam with no change,...restarted the PC...both of them in fact and that did the trick. Transferring well above fast enough. Thank heaven...

[JCPhoenix]

Reporting similar issues on between my Steam Deck and my pretty beefy gaming PC (Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 32GB RAM, all SSD drives). Deck is on WiFi while the gaming PC is on ethernet. Transferring via internal network on was showing speeds on my Steam Deck around 17-20 MB/s. But switching to downloading from Steam servers via the Internet, via WiFi, is more like 30-33 MB/s.

My home network is full gigabit ethernet and I have a WiFi 6 network via a Unifi AP (though Unifi is showing the Steam Deck connected over WiFi 5 on a 5Ghz channel). Not that it particularly matters in this case, but I have gigabit fiber.

I've run iperf3 between various computers on the network, Wired-to-Wired and Wired-to-WiFi and the reported speeds there are all within expectations. So for internal Steam transfers running as slow as they are -- slower than even Internet downloads -- seems strange.