Download speed way lower than tested bandwidth

[jackieAZ]

I've been having an issue for a while on my laptop, where I download at a max speed of around 1.4 MB/s (byte not bit). This is usable, obviously, but much slower than what I'm supposed to be getting. I'm at university, on a campus dorm, and we have gigabit. My peers get the speeds they're supposed to, and if I go to the ookla speedtest site I get an appropriate amount also (see screenshot below) but in actual downloads I get nothing about that 1.4MB/s (around 11Mbps). 

The weird thing is, I used to get normal speeds on this very same laptop, with the same, router, ethernet cable, and ethernet port. I suspect that this is some sort of software issue (atleast I hope) but idk. 

 

TLDR;

• Speedtest says I have ~850Mbps
• my normal downloads peak at 11Mbps, wtf

Edited March 22, 2021 by WubGuy

[mariushm]

Do regular downloads download fast?  For example, go on amd.com and download the video card drivers (they're big 500+ MB and on CDNs so they should download fast) or go on Microsoft.com and download some big files...

 

Your university may have some kind of transparent proxy and limit your Steam downloads.

may also want to try and go in Steam and select a region different than yours - it could be steam servers close to you are overloaded or maybe your university has a bad connection to the datacenter(s) of Steam near you or maybe they intentionally limit you ... selecting a different region may work and the speed may still be fine.

[jackieAZ]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Do regular downloads download fast?  For example, go on amd.com and download the video card drivers (they're big 500+ MB and on CDNs so they should download fast) or go on Microsoft.com and download some big files...

 

Your university may have some kind of transparent proxy and limit your Steam downloads.

may also want to try and go in Steam and select a region different than yours - it could be steam servers close to you are overloaded or maybe your university has a bad connection to the datacenter(s) of Steam near you or maybe they intentionally limit you ... selecting a different region may work and the speed may still be fine.

Everything from Steam, to drivers, etc etc that doesn't have a website-set limit, seems to peak at the same speed. The only reason I don't think it's something the university sets is because as mentioned fellow students don't seem to have the same limitations. My phone, for example, downloads much quicker despite being on WiFi compared to my laptops wired connection. 

[Fraser Cow]

6 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Do regular downloads download fast?  For example, go on amd.com and download the video card drivers (they're big 500+ MB and on CDNs so they should download fast) or go on Microsoft.com and download some big files...

 

Your university may have some kind of transparent proxy and limit your Steam downloads.

may also want to try and go in Steam and select a region different than yours - it could be steam servers close to you are overloaded or maybe your university has a bad connection to the datacenter(s) of Steam near you or maybe they intentionally limit you ... selecting a different region may work and the speed may still be fine.

This is everything I would have said.  I will add that you could try using a VPN to download from steam, It may bypass any limiting your school has put in place.  Also is your laptop's drive an SSD or HDD? maybe it's at capacity?

[manikyath]

is it a particular steam download, or every steam download?

 

steam installs while downloading, so some games' downloads may be limited in other ways.

[jackieAZ]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

is it a particular steam download, or every steam download?

 

steam installs while downloading, so some games' downloads may be limited in other ways.

I removed mentioning Steam as I think that's muddying my summary. It happens with all uncapped download sources, not just Steam, let alone a particular game. 

[jackieAZ]

7 minutes ago, Fraser Cow said:

This is everything I would have said.  I will add that you could try using a VPN to download from steam, It may bypass any limiting your school has put in place.  Also is your laptop's drive an SSD or HDD? maybe it's at capacity?

I have an NVME SSD, with about ~30GB to spare. I could try a VPN, and would appreciate suggestions for free ones that presumably don't have a download cap if you wouldn't mind lol 

[mariushm]

Then the only other options I can think of is you installing some kind of antivirus with firewall/filter built in that tries to filter internet traffic slowing it down   or ... maybe ethernet cable being so bad that the network card downgrades link to 10 mbps ... but then your maximum speeds would be capped at 1.25 MB/s