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Super weird download speeds on steam even with new fiber internet.

Raykaye
By Raykaye
in Networking
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Hey all! I just switched my internet to fiber last week and its been amazing! However... Steams download speed hasn't changed at all. If anyone can help me fix this or tell me why this is going on that would be great. I've tried a lot of the troubleshooting steam recommends like switching regions, clearing my cache, and just waiting till other hours with low traffic but nothing seems to work. here are some screenshots of what my speeds look like vs what steam is giving me.

 

image_2024-05-13_133003275.png

image_2024-05-13_133108377.png

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35 minutes ago, Raykaye said:

Steams download speed hasn't changed at all.

420 Mbps / 8 (bits per byte) = 50-something MBps, which is about what you're getting on average it looks like.

Main System (Byarlant): Ryzen 7 5800X | Asus B550-Creator ProArt | EK 240mm Basic AIO | 16GB G.Skill DDR4 3200MT/s CAS-14 | XFX Speedster SWFT 210 RX 6600 | Samsung 990 PRO 2TB / Samsung 960 PRO 512GB / 4× Crucial MX500 2TB (RAID-0) | Corsair RM750X | a 10G NIC (pending) | Inateck USB 3.0 Card | Hyte Y60 Case | Dell U3415W Monitor | Keychron K4 Brown (white backlight)

 

Laptop (Narrative): Lenovo Flex 5 81X20005US | Ryzen 5 4500U | 16GB RAM (soldered) | Vega 6 Graphics | SKHynix P31 1TB NVMe SSD | Intel AX200 Wifi (all-around awesome machine)

 

Proxmox Server (Veda): Ryzen 7 3800XT | AsRock Rack X470D4U | Corsair H80i v2 | 64GB Micron DDR4 ECC 3200MT/s | 4× WD 10TB / 4× Seagate 14TB Exos / 8× WD 12TB (custom external SAS enclosure) / 2× Samsung PM963a 960GB SSD | Seasonic Prime Fanless 500W | Intel X550-T2 10G NIC | LSI 9300-16i HBA | Fractal Design Node 804 Case (side panels swapped to show off drives) | VMs: TrueNAS Scale; Ubuntu Server (PiHole/PiVPN/NGINX?); Windows 10 Pro; Ubuntu Server (Apache/MySQL)


Media Center/Video Capture (Jesta Cannon): Ryzen 5 1600X | ASRock B450M Pro4 R2.0 | Noctua NH-L12S | 16GB Crucial DDR4 3200MT/s CAS-22 | EVGA GTX750Ti SC | UMIS NVMe SSD 256GB / TEAMGROUP MS30 1TB | Corsair CX450M | Viewcast Osprey 260e Video Capture | Mellanox ConnectX-2 10G NIC | LG UH12NS30 BD-ROM | Silverstone Sugo SG-11 Case | Sony XR65A80K

 

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Network:

Spoiler 
                           ┌─────────────── Office/Rack ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
Google Fiber Webpass ────── UniFi Security Gateway ─── UniFi Switch 8-60W ─┬─ UniFi Switch Flex XG ═╦═ Veda (Proxmox Virtual Switch)
(500Mbps↑/500Mbps↓)                             UniFi CloudKey Gen2 (PoE) ─┴─ Veda (IPMI)           ╠═ Veda-NAS (HW Passthrough NIC)
╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╩═ Narrative (Asus USB 2.5G NIC)
║ ┌────── Closet ──────┐   ┌─────────────── Bedroom ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
╚═ UniFi Switch Flex XG ═╤═ UniFi Switch Flex XG ═╦═ Byarlant
   (PoE)                 │                        ╠═ Narrative (Cable Matters USB-PD 2.5G Ethernet Dongle)
                         │                        ╚═ Jesta Cannon*
                         │ ┌─────────────── Media Center ──────────────────────────────────┐
Notes:                   └─ UniFi Switch 8 ─────────┬─ UniFi Access Point nanoHD (PoE)
═══ is Multi-Gigabit                                ├─ Sony Playstation 4 
─── is Gigabit                                      ├─ Pioneer VSX-S520
* = cable passed to Bedroom from Media Center       ├─ Sony XR65A80K (Google TV)
** = cable passed from Media Center to Bedroom      └─ Work Laptop** (Startech USB-PD Dock)

Retired/Other:

Spoiler

Laptop (Rozen-Zulu): Sony VAIO VPCF13WFX | Core i7-740QM | 8GB Patriot DDR3 | GT 425M | Samsung 850EVO 250GB SSD | Blu-ray Drive | Intel 7260 Wifi (lived a good life, retired with honor)

Testbed/Old Desktop (Kshatriya): Xeon X5470 @ 4.0GHz | ZALMAN CNPS9500 | Gigabyte EP45-UD3L | 8GB Nanya DDR2 400MHz | XFX HD6870 DD | OCZ Vertex 3 Max-IOPS 120GB | Corsair CX430M | HooToo USB 3.0 PCIe Card | Osprey 230 Video Capture | NZXT H230 Case

TrueNAS Server (La Vie en Rose): Xeon E3-1241v3 | Supermicro X10SLL-F | Corsair H60 | 32GB Micron DDR3L ECC 1600MHz | 1x Kingston 16GB SSD / Crucial MX500 500GB

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What is your peak download speed to other speedtest services at various times throughout the day? Just relying on Steam alone isn't enough to gauge anything. 

 

That being said, if there is one service that for me can fully saturate my Gigabit WAN connection its Steam, but that could be due to my region and where a CDN datacenter is.

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In my experience, downloads take longer because you are simultaneously decompressing the game while you are downloading it. Check your CPU usage while the download is happening.

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That's a great point. If your CPU isn't fast enough to handle downloads this fast, its going to slow down.

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Weird question: What is your drive formatted as? Is it NTFS?
image.png.f598f6ad19d8bf0649584b31746bd4a4.png

5950X/3080Ti primary rig  |  1920X/1070Ti Unraid for dockers  |  200TB TrueNAS w/ 1:1 backup

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On 5/13/2024 at 2:20 PM, OddOod said:

Weird question: What is your drive formatted as? Is it NTFS?
image.png.f598f6ad19d8bf0649584b31746bd4a4.png

hey! yeah its currently NTFS
image.png.3b4715ae88784172d54a51c3bd440827.png

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On 5/13/2024 at 2:14 PM, GuiltySpark_ said:

What is your peak download speed to other speedtest services at various times throughout the day? Just relying on Steam alone isn't enough to gauge anything. 

 

That being said, if there is one service that for me can fully saturate my Gigabit WAN connection its Steam, but that could be due to my region and where a CDN datacenter is.

well with other tests from various speed test services I've gotten super similar results. everything staying in the ballpark range like the screenshot I had sent in my first post. ive been told recently that it could just be steam throttling downloads and its been like this for a very long time.

 

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31 minutes ago, Raykaye said:

well with other tests from various speed test services I've gotten super similar results. everything staying in the ballpark range like the screenshot I had sent in my first post. ive been told recently that it could just be steam throttling downloads and its been like this for a very long time.

 

If you’re seeing similar peak download speeds using other Speedtest tests, there could be an issue with your ISP. How did you perform these tests? What services were used? Was any run during off peak hours?

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What region of the US are you located in? It is possible that you are just in a bad area for steam's CDN

Also, full specs of the PC? Is there any Quality of Life settings on your router that might be doing this?
Ultimately, yes, you should be getting double the speed, but even pulling downloads at 250Mbps isn't the end of the world. And you certainly are getting peaks of 750Mbps which is pretty solid 

5950X/3080Ti primary rig  |  1920X/1070Ti Unraid for dockers  |  200TB TrueNAS w/ 1:1 backup

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19 hours ago, Raykaye said:

hey! yeah its currently NTFS
image.png.3b4715ae88784172d54a51c3bd440827.png

Good, if it were exFAT it could be a problem, but NTFS is ideal

5950X/3080Ti primary rig  |  1920X/1070Ti Unraid for dockers  |  200TB TrueNAS w/ 1:1 backup

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I suggest you look at random 4k crystaldiskmark results for most nvme drives (except intel optane).

 

I suspect the esults for random 4k Q1T1 read results are  an issue.

 

 

When playing a game,  it will typically be much faster sequential reads.

My internet speed is only 100Mb/s

 

Game updates are nearly always through a laancache, with the game data available.

My LAN  speed is 2.5Gb/s.

Game updates are rarely as fast as 2.5Gb/s , but always faster than 100Mb/s, so  the updates or provided through the lancache.  

https://lancache.net/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Main Machine: CPU: 5800X3D  RAM: 32GB  GPU: RTX 3080  M/B: ASUS B550-E Storage: 2 x 256GB NVME boot, 1/2 TB NVME OS: Windows 10, Ubuntu 22.04

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On 5/13/2024 at 7:31 PM, Raykaye said:

Hey all! I just switched my internet to fiber last week and its been amazing! However... Steams download speed hasn't changed at all. If anyone can help me fix this or tell me why this is going on that would be great. I've tried a lot of the troubleshooting steam recommends like switching regions, clearing my cache, and just waiting till other hours with low traffic but nothing seems to work. here are some screenshots of what my speeds look like vs what steam is giving me.

 

image_2024-05-13_133003275.png

image_2024-05-13_133108377.png

In your screenshot Steam peaked at 635Mbit, much faster than you speed test.

 

Depending on how your fibre is provisioned, it could just be your ISP is grossly overselling the speed so nobody is hitting their maximum download speed due to contention on the downstream.  You're more likely to hit the upload speed rate as its far less likely that upload would be heavily utilised by everyone at the same time.

 

To test this theory it can be useful to run a speed test in really early morning, when its less likely anyone else is using their connection.

 

But its certainly true Steam is heavily CPU and storage limited with updates often WAY slower than downloading a game from scratch, as updates often are just patches for your existing files so can be lots of small files, rather than a fresh download which will be the whole bigger files which have time for speeds to ramp up.

Router:  Intel N100 (pfSense) WiFi6: Zyxel NWA210AX (1.7Gbit peak at 160Mhz)
WiFi5: Ubiquiti NanoHD OpenWRT (~500Mbit at 80Mhz) Switches: Netgear MS510TXUP, MS510TXPP, GS110EMX
ISPs: Zen Full Fibre 900 (~930Mbit down, 115Mbit up) + Three 5G (~800Mbit down, 115Mbit up)
Upgrading Laptop/Desktop CNVIo WiFi 5 cards to PCIe WiFi6e/7

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after calling my ISP they said it would be a problem from steams end and not theirs... But after contacting steam support they told me it was my ISP. Its not a huge deal for me because I still download games relatively quickly on steam but compared to other launchers like Battle.net and epic which get normally 150 mb/s download its driving me a bit crazy.

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What does your CPU utilization look like when the downloads slow down?

I sold my soul for ProSupport.

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