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.

[Corrodias]

I was getting similarly low transfer speeds, 13 MB/s or so, on a LAN demonstrably capable of handling 110+. It was also absolutely decimating the WAN latency on the sending system (I was getting high latency in a game I was playing while it went on), implying that it *may* have actually been saturating the link, despite claiming so little speed in the client. Is the Steam transfer protocol wildly inefficient, somehow?

[Tendai2404]

After rebooting the deck then going into desktop mode and updating all the little kda plasma type apps and internal linux stuff it worked perfectly

[Hades]

here

[*=0=1=4=*]

It has been unreliable. I came here today because the transfer either won't start, or when it does, is slower than my Internet speed. My Internet speed is slower than most gamers these days. Both my server and client are gigabit wired to the same switch. There isn't even a router in between. I should be getting 90MB/ps or better.

Results of iperf3 test:

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 114 MBytes 956 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 112 MBytes 940 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 112 MBytes 944 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 112 MBytes 941 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 112 MBytes 943 Mbits/sec 0 386 KBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 112 MBytes 938 Mbits/sec 0 406 KBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 112 MBytes 943 Mbits/sec 0 406 KBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 112 MBytes 939 Mbits/sec 0 406 KBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 113 MBytes 946 Mbits/sec 0 406 KBytes

Back to rsync?

[Perroboc]

Desktop on ethernet 1gbps, deck on wifi, ~860 mbps reported.

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 0 pending, 296 total sent, 296 total requested
 - bytes  : 310.38 MB read from disk at 9.93 MB/sec, 309.16 MB sent via network at 9.84 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 54 oustanding sends (56.05 MB)

The speeds are awful, similar to iperf3 with 1 thread.

Going into desktop mode didn't change much

] peer_content_server_status
Peer content server status (1 connections):
 - chunks : 0 pending, 513 total sent, 513 total requested
 - bytes  : 533.88 MB read from disk at 14.41 MB/sec, 252.08 MB sent via network at 6.35 MB/sec
 - TCP    : 71 oustanding sends (42.44 MB)

It's just a bad implementation. Running a speed test between both machines give me these results:
desktop as server running OpenSpeedTest, steam deck as client, using firefox: 280mbps, or 35 MB/s.

Using steam? 10 MB/s

From the deck, I used fast.com to also test speed to the internet: 350 Mbps, or 43.75 MB/s.

TL;DR: it's faster to download from the internet than locally between steam machines.

[banzaimonkey]

I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why this could be slow but in my case it was especially bad because of a bad cable, which limited my link speed to 100mbit during autonegotiation.

After I moved one device to another spot in my house where it could reliably negotiate a 1gbit connection, my transfer speeds improved from 10mb/s to 35mb/s.

Maximum possible measured speed in this configuration was 70mb/s (transferred from RAM), so Steam local transfer was not able to saturate the network connection. Steam transfer could be limited by disk I/O, but even for a spinning disk I'd expect sustained 80mb/s read.

[Arc]

Oprindeligt skrevet af banzaimonkey:

...

Indeed, but for when iPerf reads 9.4Gb/s in either direction in-between 3 of my PCs connected to the same switch, and Windows SMB transferes at this very line speed (~1GB/s) then there's only one troublemaker, and it's Steam :3

Like, the compression is there because it's using the same SteamPipe content delivery which is what makes it hot-swappable between LAN and WAN sources.

But it gets in the way when you want to actually saturate line speed of modern networks unless you have top-end PC or a workstation class CPU at which point you might as well use the Steam cache method anyway.
Steam is NOT capable of running 1Gb/s line speed on medium speced PC whatsoever, let alone more modern 2.5Gb/s networking or in my case 10Gb/s due to compression overhead.

An option to turn it off and lose WAN swap when LAN source is off would help. Generally speaking, if you have a network problem, it's likely going to affect your WAN connection anyway, so the need for the current system to be default isn't there.

[StP -.o]

si no reparan y optimizan gg

[StP -.o]

gg

[ark]

Oprindeligt skrevet af p0k314NET:

Steam LAN transfer is not for yours comfortability, but for save bandwidth on Steam servers to cut costs. They do not care how it works, if it works.

This is a baffling response. If it can save bandwidth and be fast, it should.

I would like my devices that support Wifi6 to use Wifi6 when transferring and not be arbitrarily capped at a couple mbps.

[Arc]

https://i.imgur.com/cOpbDan.png

Upgraded to 5800X3D and it still does not reach 1Gbps speeds on average because the CPU is still the bottleneck.
At start it peaked 1.6Gbps, dropped down to 600Mbps and now hovers around 800Mbps on what is otherwise network fully capable of saturating 10Gbps links.

Sounds like an utterly pointless endeavour given my WAN is 500Mbps fiber link which also does not tax my CPU.

Who is this feature for ?

[Syko]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Arc:

Who is this feature for ?

From the top of my head, households with many users that might have a bandwidth cap on their internet. Or just don't want to hog the internet bandwidth constantly downloading the same files.

I have two boys, my PC, my Steam deck, my HTPC and they have a lot of the same games on them. Using this system I only have to download the games once and then pass them around locally.

Luckily my Internet is fast enough and has no caps that I don't need this, but it's a pretty useful feature still on terms of wasted bandwidth. I'm leaving it on for now as it seems useful enough.

[esotericist]

there's an unfortunate gap between "who it's for" and "who it's successfully serving"

[Arc]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Syko:

From the top of my head, households with many users that might have a bandwidth cap on their internet. Or just don't want to hog the internet bandwidth constantly downloading the same files.

I have two boys, my PC, my Steam deck, my HTPC and they have a lot of the same games on them. Using this system I only have to download the games once and then pass them around locally.

Luckily my Internet is fast enough and has no caps that I don't need this, but it's a pretty useful feature still on terms of wasted bandwidth. I'm leaving it on for now as it seems useful enough.

If i would copy them games over SMB or used some external tools, it would be 10 times as fast at best and on par if I'd copy over WiFi and since I have cable ethernet everywhere I ain't bottlenecked by WiFi at all, so at worst a 1Gb/s, with no need to waste CPU time while doing so or having the server PC unusable for 20 minutes.

SteamPipe is efficienf for bandwidth limited situations, that's what it was designed for.
But when it in itself becomes the bottleneck, the usefulness of this feature simply isn't there.

The convenient factor is also barely there since you need the second PC in idle so it locks you out effectively.

If there would be option to disable SteamPipe-like delivery and just have it copy the files directly andthen just have it verified on the client as usual, everybody would benefit from.
The function would serve it's actual purpose of saving bandwith and being convenient, to every single usecase there is.

Currently it seems the only real reason for this feature is Steam Deck, and again, 3rd party tools do better job but are like 1% less convenient.

And that's my point again.

[alamoscouts]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Syko:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Arc:

Who is this feature for ?

From the top of my head, households with many users that might have a bandwidth cap on their internet. Or just don't want to hog the internet bandwidth constantly downloading the same files.

I have two boys, my PC, my Steam deck, my HTPC and they have a lot of the same games on them. Using this system I only have to download the games once and then pass them around locally.

Luckily my Internet is fast enough and has no caps that I don't need this, but it's a pretty useful feature still on terms of wasted bandwidth. I'm leaving it on for now as it seems useful enough.

It moves much, much slower than my internet cap; and it is way faster to use a portable USB 3.0 drive or direct Ethernet transfer using nitroshare.