Does anyone else experience really cr*p download speed on Steam lately? I've spent a massive amount (£2.99 ) on Alien VS Predator Classic 2000 and it's downloading at a super slow (but steady) 60kbps and it's only 369 megabytes in total! I know I'm on ADSL but this kind of takes the p*ss, because downloading from Microsoft or a similar fast site I get speeds easily over 600 kbps constantly which is 10 times faster than what I'm getting on Steam, it started off fast at 569 kbps but dropped very quickly to 60 kbps and no increase on that. Can't be my firewall as Steam has access all areas to do what it needs to do and everything else from other sites downloads quickly, it's just Steam that's so slooooooowwwwwwwwwwww, anyone else have that problem?
Nope, I'm still downloading at 1.2MB/s here. Which ISP are you with? My first thought would be that they are throttling P2P connections.
Downloaded Alien v Predator yesterday a brisk 9 hour download started at 600kbp and dropped to 50kbp in the evening good old tiscali/talktalk.
the worst times to download games on steam are the beginning of the weekend steam deal and ~24hrs of when the games are released. Source from sHORNY
try changing you nation to the phillipines or korea or something, those servers tend to have less load
Playing around with the servers can help sometimes. It always seems to connect me to some random server when i download something so if it's not fast enough i have to pick another one manually. Germany usually gives me 3 Mbytes/sec
I can often get around 1.5-2mbps (Virgin 20mbit cable), regardless of time of day. This is with the UK servers, too...
I do alright on steam, with only 2 meg broadband i downloaded shattered horizon at a constant 240 kbps which is about as good as it gets.
I've never gotten anything past 500KB/s on steam, even tough I'm on 50mbit fibre connection. Many of my pals often get above 2MB/s though so there's clearly something wrong somewhere...
+1 to changing your server location, sometimes gives it a good boost. i'm still set on a really random one somewhere in France, maxes out for me.
Only used it once so far - 10gb of Dirt 2 - was pretty much a constant 230kb/s for me, which is as fast as my connection can carry it.
Funnily enough I have been getting the same. Changing the server does not seem to make any difference. I am on virgin ADSL. It has been for the last 2 - 3 weeks getting speeds of only 50 - 60 KB/s. Before I would normally get 700 - 800 KB/s from steam. I am getting normal download speeds everywhere else so I can only assume virgin have decided they dont like Steam any more. I think I will send virgin an email to see what they say. I fear it may be time for a change.
Same here poo417, it makes no difference if I change the server to phillippines/korea or any of the others, it's constantly set at a pathetic 50-60 kb/s (60 being the max!!!!!!) and it's Virgin ADSL that i'm on as well. Let me know if you here anything from Virgin as i'm also going to E-Mail the tw*ts. Might be an idea to post here as well http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband-down-your-phone-line/bd-p/national
I've just worked out how long it'd take to download 15 gigabytes (which is the size of Alien VS Predator) from Steam at 60 kb/s! 3.5 megabytes per minute @ 60 kb/s = 210 megabytes per hour Downloading 210 megabytes per hour for 24 hours = 5040 megabytes So it would take 3 days solid downloading (that's the full 24 hours each day) to get the new Alien VS Predator game downloaded on Steam! Pathetic!
It helps a LOT if your ISP runs its own steam mirror/cache just for its users. I Know Virgin Media (cable) does this, hence VM customers tend to get consistently excellent Steam download speeds. As with all downloads though, if you're on ADSL with BT wholesale (ie, not LLU), you'll get packet managed and shaped to buggery as the bandwidth costs are £lol for ISPs.
That explains why my Steam downloads constantly reach the line speed (2.2mbit/s, on Virgin 20mbit cable)...
What!! Virgin Media Cable customers get the cache but Virgin Media ADSL (National) customers get f*ck all, explains why the speed is so sh*t then. Gonna have to look for a new ISP then.
When my steam downloads slow down [which I always run from midnight to 06:00] I switch steam country settings to France. I don't smell, or fancy my sister, but this often gets a good speed when the UK specific servers are a bit busy.