| Steam and Throttling Eastlink is my ISP. I have a 15Mb connection with them
I can download @ 1.8MB/s from a websites.
My torrents are limited to 475KB/s. Whatever, I can deal with that.
However, I use Steam (www.steampowered.com) to download and play games. Its a digital distribution service and a very popular one. Its how a lot of stuff is going to work in the future.
Why is Steam is throttled as well?!?
I cannot download a game or demo at more than 475KB/s from steam. I think Steam uses bittorrent technology to distribute stuff which might explain the problem, but its not a good excuse.
Does anyone else have this problem? Its fairly easy to test.
Here's a demo to download: »store.steampowered.com/app/35710/
Make sure you install the client first.
You should be easily able to max out your connection as they have gigs of bandwidth available.
Especially interested in what other eastlink users fine. What about you Bell and Teksavvy users? |
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2 edits | I don't think Steam uses P2P. I think Valve uses Limelight Networks for content distribution. At least that is what cdn.steampowered.com leads to.
traceroute: Warning: cdn.steampowered.com has multiple addresses; using 208.111.181.16
traceroute to valve.vo.llnwd.net (208.111.181.16), 64 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 wrt54gl (192.168.2.1) 1.314 ms 3.739 ms 0.777 ms
2 lo-100.erx05.tor.packetflow.ca (206.248.154.105) 11.637 ms 12.840 ms 11.414 ms
3 2120.ae0.bdr02.tor.packetflow.ca (69.196.136.66) 10.578 ms 10.528 ms 13.229 ms
4 gw-llnw.torontointernetxchange.net (198.32.245.94) 10.766 ms 10.711 ms 10.258 ms
5 cds13.yyz.llnw.net (208.111.181.16) 11.854 ms 10.744 ms 10.969 ms
You can change the content server you are directed to by going into Steam and going to Settings --> Downloads and choosing a different download region. You could try changing regions and see if you get better speeds. Also make sure your "Approximate speed of your internet connection" is set to Cable/Fiber > 10M.
I am with Teksavvy and my download region is set to Toronto. Except for peak periods right after a big release/patch, Steam always maxes out my 5 Mbit connection. |
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 twizlarI dont think so.Premium
join:2003-12-24
Brantford, ON
kudos:3 | reply to SirX
Steam does not use p2p or BT for distribution. |
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| reply to vonSchroeder
said by vonSchroeder:... Steam always maxes out my 5 Mbit connection. Do you know this for sure?
How are you measuring this?
Why would a game need to use this much bandwidth?
Or is this an assumption, conclusion, or interpretation of something else?
Could it be that you are experiencing the effects of congestion, or worse, the effects of connection spikes that will paralyze or crash a NAT-SPI-conntrack router?
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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twizlarI dont think so.Premium
join:2003-12-24
Brantford, ON
kudos:3 | Hes talking about the downloading of content. |
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| said by twizlar:Hes talking about the downloading of content. Oh. Thanks! Should have read that more thoroughly. 
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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1 edit | reply to vonSchroeder
Okay, good to know they are not using P2P. But why is it throttled then?!?
I have tried a couple of differnet content servers, but the speed didn't change at all, it stayed capped at 475KB
I am trying to talk to who I can at Eastlink to get this resolved as I assume it isn't intended to be throttled. |
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1 edit | Steam -- Maximum Concurrent Connections [Edited for more precision and less distraction.]
I am going to ask 3 direct questions:
[1] What is the default maximum number of simultaneous (or near-simultaneous) connections that a Steam client will try to establish?
[2] Can this be increased further in a configuration setting, and if so, what is the maximum setting that the client allows?
[3] Can this be limited to, say, 50 in a configuration setting?
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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| Re: Steam and Throttling Well seeing as that post is from 2005 and Steam has been updated about a million times since then I am going to say its a none issue. Plus I used to be able to get faster speeds before Eastlink's throttling kicked in locally.
They just bought out the local cable company a few months ago. |
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| reply to planiwa
Re: Steam -- Concurrent Connection Surges I have reworded the questions slightly: »Steam -- Maximum Concurrent Connections
Perhaps there is a Steam user who understands the questions and is able to find the answers from his Steam client configuration settings?
I have read that "server refreshing" may result in an instant surge of up to 20,000 connection attempts. Is that so?
Are Steam users able to limit the maximum number of servers? Maximum number of connection attempts? Either concurrent or per second?
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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twizlarI dont think so.Premium
join:2003-12-24
Brantford, ON
kudos:3 | For server refreshing it will initiate massive amounts of connections as it has to ping and query each server manually.
As for the actual file downloading it uses http.
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Broadline Networks Inc. |
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| Do a speed test to find out your actual speed |
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| reply to twizlar
said by twizlar:For server refreshing it will initiate massive amounts of connections as it has to ping and query each server manually. As for the actual file downloading it uses http. Thanks.
And if those servers are pinged by name (rather than IP address), this will result in 4 NAT-connections for each server.
Why does it need zillions of servers?
Does it download in parallel streams?
If so, how many streams for a typical download?
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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3 edits | I think you are confusing two different aspects of Steam. The OP is about downloading of content. One major aspect of Steam is content distribution of games. This content, as far as I know, is downloaded from a single content server based on geographic region using a single HTTP stream (for each download in progress). I am not sure if there is an internal limit in Steam for how many games you can be updating/downloading at once.
The aspect of Steam that causes all the simultaneous connections that can momentarily cripple an Internet connection is the Steam server browser. Many of the games on Steam are online, multiplayer games for which individuals or clans/guilds run their own game server. Steam provides a master server browser to list all of these servers. Therefore, when a Steam user opens the server browser it looks up all the servers currently running for all the games owned by that user that are supported by the server browser. For each server the server browser retrieves the server name, the game being played, the current number and max number of players for the server, the map being played, and the latency (ping). There are thousands of servers out there. I just opened up the server browser and turned off all the filters and the browser returned over 10,000 servers after a few minutes.
EDIT: I did another quick test. I refreshed the server browser again but this time I had the web interface for my router open (WRT54GL Tomato/MLPPP 1.21a4). I opened the connection tracker page and watched the connections skyrocket. I have the max connections in Tomato set to 4096 and with the Steam server browser refreshing it almost got there. It peaked at about 3900 simultaneous connections. |
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| You may want to try this in Tomato, with QoS enabled:
QoS>Graphs. 3s refresh
This also counts connections, by classification -- in colour.
Now, run the same Steam test again.
You may find that during the surge, a very high proportion of the connections are classified "Highest" or "Unclassified". Especially if DNS lookups have to be done for those pings.
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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| reply to blackdragon1
Actual speed in a speed test is 1.7MB/s
Max i can get while downloading a game right now is no more than 480kb/s 
If its HTTP, then I still don't understand why I have an issue. I can download a regualr file from a site at full speed...
Maybe this is some sort of steam issue or a problem with my PC? Or a router issue?
But it seems to be more of a thing where Eastlink sees a download not initiated off of a website and throttles it.... |
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2% packet loss at 100ms |
said by SirX:If its HTTP, then I still don't understand why I have an issue. I can download a regualr file from a site at full speed... If you can download HTTP from another site fast ...
But you can only download HTTP from Steam slow ...
have you thought of asking Steam for their explanation?
FWIW, I just did a ping probe and got 2% packet loss, with 100ms latency. Some say that the TCP throughput with 1% packet loss and 100ms latency is "nil".
You may want to read the pertinent parts from this article:
»Re: Can line noise slow DSL-"speed" without changing sync rate?
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the maximum throughput at 100ms RTT and 2% packet loss, according to Mathis' formula.
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»[RFC] Connection / Speed Problems Checklist |
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| I talked to support again.
They basically said, ya its throttled, there is nothing we can do.
I asked if I could talke dto someone about getting Steam Unthrottled as I can't be the only one affected.
They said, "nope, we can't change the throttling, sorry"
So the answer is "to bad, there is nothing we can do."
This makes me rather angry.
Any luck here getting around their throttling? |
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| reply to planiwa
said by planiwa:have you thought of asking Steam for their explanation? Yes I have, the said I should have lots of bandwidth availble, try changed servers (which I did) and there was nothing they could do.
said by planiwa:FWIW, I just did a ping probe and got 2% packet loss, with 100ms latency. Some say that the TCP throughput with 1% packet loss and 100ms latency is "nil" you are pinging their main website, not the content servers that the client downloads the data from. I have tried several of those and the speed doesn't change. Not at all.
Which is why I am sure its throttled. |
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 mlernerPremium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON
kudos:5 | reply to SirX
Trying sending a message to Deadpool, he can usually clear up these issues. |
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