#Steam download speeds download
So, they can never guarantee that speed for all users.Īs for you saying "even when I had a 10 Mbps ADSL download speed before, I still didn't max it out at all with 2 computers playing an online game using the Steam service and still had room for at least 2-3 more mobile devices". Line distance from the DSLAM and line quality (which can be influenced by age, erosion, oxygen on the lines, even in some cases high EMF interference) are huge determining factors for final line speed. Still, in contracts they offer "speeds up to" on those lines too, but that's due to it being a copper-based network. There is far more hardware available, and the bandwidth being offered is far lower anyway, so the speed they advertise (let's say, 20 Mb/s) will always be available, regardless of local congestion. In the case of ADSL networks, they rely on the same copper networks that have been used for phone lines for decades. In the case of fiber networks, yes, congestion can be a reason for slow speeds, but the effect of it can result in anywhere between 65% - 90% of your promised speed, and fluctuate quite strongly. To prevent too much congestion, it would be feasible to throttle some of that to keep steady connections across your hardware, and manageable speeds for all. So, if Steam were to allow you to download at that speed, they could only cater to 409.6 people with speeds like yours. Your 12.5 MB/s line would only fit in there 409.6 times. Now let's say one of their collocations has a 20 or 40 Gb/s pipe, or two of them. With a 100 Mb/s line, in the few times you might actually be receiving that 100 Mb/s from your ISP, you'd be receiving 12.5 MB/s downstream, which is quite blazingly fast. Maybe they even have a hard limiter set on the port on their end to prevent someone with a huge fat pipe swallowing up a lot of their bandwidth and causing congestion issues and time-outs for others. Then there's the fact that Steam, if its' collocation's (whatever location you've picked from the list in the "Downloads" tab) busy already with some uploads to people, they only have so much bandwidth to spare, themselves. It's because ISPs want to cheap out on infrastructure and hardware. If you would, you'd be paying roughly 5 to 10 times what you're paying now for that line, and more likely have a business line with a SLA attached rather than a private line with no SLA or any guarantee of speed. And usually you won't get it, either, due to local congestion.
![steam download speeds steam download speeds](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OheJ1GkcV_Q/maxresdefault.jpg)
The reason your connection doesn't get maxed out can be down to two things - you've got high speed fiber, you say? 100 Mb/s? Yeah, most ISPs offering such lines will state in their fine print that they offer speeds "up to" 100 Mb/s. Before that, again Steam used to max out people's connections.
![steam download speeds steam download speeds](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MIqTio0zWew/maxresdefault.jpg)
That's an entirely new feature that only recently was added. That's why now, Steam has a download limiter in the settings, under the "Downloads" tab. Steam has always maxed out and used all of peoples' bandwidth - it was an issue many bitched about, due to a) no one else in their house being able to use the 'net while someone was downloading / updating a game, and b) themselves having an all but non-functioning 'net connection on their own PC. All this "you won't get your max speed" stuff is, however, entirely irrelevant, as OP posted his results, which obviously already includes all this overhead. That still leaves a healthy 85 - 90% of your theoretically attainable line speed. The last two add up to usually take up about 10% of your line speed, excepting very fast lines. What you're talking about with "you won't get your max speed most of the time" refers to transport overhead, which is a negligibly small amount for the TCP/IP protocol (error correction bits) + in the case of DSL, due to how frames are built up (when dealing with PPPoA, which most providers use), you always have some extra transport overhead that is somewhat significant (slightly less so on DOCSIS 2 lines) along with DSL having its' own error correction, as well. Or the fire departments' national grid that had a max allowed downtime of 15 minutes, regardless of the cause of downtime, due to their SLA. Lines like Schiphol airports' dual 20 GB/s lines. I've worked on all manner of Cisco hardware, including 2000 port Juniper routers (with about 10 virtual ports per port), part of which was managing the top 2000 business customers of KPN, the main Dutch ISP. Oh btw, I have worked on backbone routers on fiber lines, as well as ADSL2+, and have given support on both DOCSIS 1 and 2 lines.