Why does steam limit downloads?

[Drkrinklez]

I get about 35-50 down and steam downloads only up to 7 mbps. I don't have it limited,why does it do this?

[manikyath]

do you actually get 35-50 down, and which ISP (and which country for that matter) do you use?

 

there's more to steam download speeds than the download speed you get from your ISP.

[Oshino Shinobu]

You may be mixing up Megabits per second and Megabytes per second. There are 8 bits in a byte.

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You may be mixing up Megabits per second and Megabytes per second. There are 8 bits in a byte.

This.

 

By default steam displays downloads in MegaBytes while internet speed is sold in Megabits. Take steam download speed in MBps * 8 = Mbps

In your case, 7*8 = 56 so you're getting what you pay for  

[KenjiUmino]

6 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You may be mixing up Megabits per second and Megabytes per second.

looks like it. 

 

if the gets up to 7 megaBYTE per second download speed that would be 56 megaBIT per second and is actually very good for a 50mbit connection.

 

on my 50mbit connection steam can do a little over 40mbit wich equals 5 mbyte - but i live in a house full of people who are online at the same time so ... not bad either  

[Drkrinklez]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

do you actually get 35-50 down, and which ISP (and which country for that matter) do you use?

 

there's more to steam download speeds than the download speed you get from your ISP.

https://gyazo.com/91ed84a3af62db0e1c44c193c4336e91

Take a look. I have Cox in the U.S.

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Drkrinklez said:

https://gyazo.com/91ed84a3af62db0e1c44c193c4336e91

Take a look. I have Cox in the U.S.

44.7 Mbps = 5.6 MBps. Steam shows downloads (by default) in Megabytes per second, not Megabits. Sounds like you're getting what you're paying for, just mixing up Megabits and Megabytes. 

 

7MBps = 56Mbps

[Drkrinklez]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

44.7 Mbps = 5.6 MBps. Steam shows downloads (by default) in Megabytes per second, not Megabits. Sounds like you're getting what you're paying for, just mixing up Megabits and Megabytes. 

OH I SEE! Thank you so much! I feel pretty dumb now lol

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Drkrinklez said:

OH I SEE! Thank you so much! I feel pretty dumb now lol

It's a very common question on the forums. Mostly down to ISP marketing really. "up to" speeds and using Mb/s rather than Mbps (Megabytes is commonly shown in MB/s and Megabits in Mbps. Even though the capital B is what is important, the formatting can confuse people)

[Drkrinklez]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

It's a very common question on the forums. Mostly down to ISP marketing really. 

Ok cool

[Lurick]

4 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

It's a very common question on the forums. Mostly down to ISP marketing really. "up to" speeds and using Mb/s rather than Mbps (Megabytes is commonly shown in MB/s and Megabits in Mbps. Even though the capital B is what is important, the formatting can confuse people)

Technically the correct way is Mbps since data is transferred in bits (1 or 0) and bytes are for the smallest piece of consumable information (8 bits), but of course nobody wants to keep things standard and most don't pay attention to the size of the B or don't think it matters which can cause problems, as seen a lot on these forums

 

Now let's talk about MiB  

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Technically the correct way is Mbps since data is transferred in bits (1 or 0) and bytes are for the smallest piece of consumable information (8 bits), but of course nobody wants to keep things standard and most don't pay attention to the size of the B or don't think it matters which can cause problems, as seen a lot on these forums

 

Now let's talk about MiB  

WHY IS MY 1TB DRIVE SHOWING AS 931GB????

 

(Because Microsoft uses the wrong abbreviations)

[Lurick]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

WHY IS MY 1TB DRIVE SHOWING AS 931GB????

Because reasons......

[manikyath]

10 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

It's a very common question on the forums. Mostly down to ISP marketing really. "up to" speeds and using Mb/s rather than Mbps (Megabytes is commonly shown in MB/s and Megabits in Mbps. Even though the capital B is what is important, the formatting can confuse people)

the Mbps vs MBps thing isnt (only) a marketing thing, they are used for describing different cases.

in this example, the link speed is expressed in megabits per second, talking about the amount of troughput.

also in this example, the speed steam indicates is megabytes per second, talking about the actual "amount of data" moved. the amount of data moved differs from the link speed because of overhead in networking protocols, compression, potential issues like missed packages (and having to send them again), and so on.

 

the ISP side of things cares about the link speed, because thats their buisiness: providing a link speed.

the steam side of things cares about the amount of data they got in, because thats their buisiness: shoving the files of a game onto your box so you can play what you paid for.

 

there's instances like origin where they use compression, with as a result having the amount of data moved be higher than the link speed. there's also examples of the opposite, where for example with IRC the protocol overhead is often much greater than the amount of actual data that gets pushed. (not that a chat client has much data to ship )

 

my only issue with this is that i'd have very much preferred the term chosen to be baud instead of bits per second, it'd have cleared up so much confusion

[Lurick]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

-snip-

I prefer the nibble