PlusNet and Steam, fast to slow issue

Just wondering if any other PlusNet users who use Steam are seeing a variable download rate regardless of whatever Steam server location you use? It's very noticable today.

Downloading a game I'm getting full line speed (almost) around 75Mbps which slows to around 0Mbps and then repeats the process. So the Steam download speed graph looks as though there are peaks and troughs. But the process is consistent and fast to 0bps takes around 10 seconds. Has anyone noticed this? - Thanks.

Must admit I've had some odd issues with PlusNet and will probably jump ship after my contract is up in a couple of months.

Edited by Vorlon (Sat 07-Oct-17 14:13:53)

Trying to download 10 GB from Steam at the moment and it's been struggling to even hit 1 MB/s for over an hour now. It has peaked at 6.7 MB/s but watching it now it's struggling to get even 100 KB/s. Even tried coming out of Steam and going back in again.

On the bright side it'll be finished in 1 day 21 hours according to the current estimate

In reply to a post by Bodmeister:

Trying to download 10 GB from Steam at the moment and it's been struggling to even hit 1 MB/s for over an hour now. It has peaked at 6.7 MB/s but watching it now it's struggling to get even 100 KB/s. Even tried coming out of Steam and going back in again.

On the bright side it'll be finished in 1 day 21 hours according to the current estimate

I wondered if it was more likely to be a Steam thing, but in comparison Steam vs ISP, it's always in my experience to be the ISP at fault. I have tried European servers and found the same, but I have seen someone mention that selecting the Caribbean server gets a better download.
The server list for those that might not know is in the Steam Program's settings page in I think the Download sub section.

In reply to a post by Vorlon:

Just wondering if any other PlusNet users who use Steam are seeing a variable download rate regardless of whatever Steam server location you use? It's very noticable today.

Downloading a game I'm getting full line speed (almost) around 75Mbps which slows to around 0Mbps and then repeats the process. So the Steam download speed graph looks as though there are peaks and troughs. But the process is consistent and fast to 0bps takes around 10 seconds. Has anyone noticed this? - Thanks.

Must admit I've had some odd issues with PlusNet and will probably jump ship after my contract is up in a couple of months.

I had this on TTB - it was also due to my SSD having issues. But it's not just Plusnet.

Can't say I've ever noticed the up and down fun and games when downloading (I'm with PN too). But they do tend to start off fast and then slow quite some. Given that I get much the same with Microsoft (when doing updates), I suspect all that happens is the longer (and bigger) the download, the quicker any cache empties and you're then back to what the server(s) can truly manage to dish out at that time. I see I'm on Manchester

Have you tried running a speedtest while downloading at 1mb/s? Soon show up where the problem lies. After all, it's hardly likely to make much difference to the download if you're on a fast connection as you are running another download. Could even run a trace to Steam.

Other people reporting problems downdetector/problems/steam

Edited by 69bertie (Sun 08-Oct-17 09:57:17)

Thanks 69bertie.

The next morning when I launched Steam to see if I could download what was another 20GB of data to complete the problematic update to a game (due to a dlc purchase) I found the download to be fast and stable.

Reading the various feedback on the web, the best i could glean is that it may of been a DDOS attack on Steam. However, I haven't found anything official to say that it was - not even a news story.
But reading around, it seems some of the servers in the US were OK and others as per the most of Europe were not. A mixture of far away places seemed to be OK, but their distance meant that downloads were naturally slow but still significantly better than the two Steam UK server locations.

Luckily I generally backup my games to an external Hard Drive via the Steam built in utility which does a good compression job - I think Bzip may be used. With some of the games around 50GB in size and not enough space to have them always installed, it saves time and avoids "pressure" on the ISP, if I want to reinstall one. Although the only caveat to getting the game/software installed quickly from your possibly old backup, is that it seems it must be brought up-to-date first before it'll run again, so you still need the Net to complete it anyway.

Edited by Vorlon (Mon 09-Oct-17 11:51:41)