Why is my Speedtest fast but my connection is slow when downloading?

[Parzival120]

So when I run a speed test on my pc I get about 90mbs download but when I download a game or an app it says my connection is only 10mbs. Why? And how do I fix it

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, Parzival120 said:

So when I run a speed test on my pc I get about 90mbs download but when I download a game or an app it says my connection is only 10mbs. Why? And how do I fix it

Speedtest give your network speed in megabits per second, yet most game installers I know of give that info in megabytes per second. 1 MB = 8 Mb, so the numbers you're getting are pretty much expected.

[BecauseRussia]

Downloading things from the internet are never consistent for any number of reasons. I'll try to cover a few things here.

 

When you run a speedtest it finds the closest server to your physical location to run the test. This is good for testing to see if you are getting the full bandwidth you pay from your ISP. However, it is not always applicable to the real world.

 

In your case most likely the server you are downloading from is further way than the server the speed test is run on. The further away from your physical location you get generally the slower your speeds are going to be.

 

So in your case I would look to see if you have the option to choose a download server that is closer to your physical location. In steam you also have the option to limit your download speed. I would make sure that it is not enabled.

 

Finally, make sure it says mbps or MBps these are two different ways of measuring the same thing. For example a 100mbps connection is equal to a 12.5MBps connection. They are the same speed just represented by different scales.

 

Also, some websites limit download speeds on their end. For example even when I download Pop_OS! at work where I have a symmetrical gigabit connection. Pop_OS will only let me download at like 10MBps as to not overwhelm their servers.