Anyone else have cripplingly slow Steam download speeds?

I just installed a fresh copy of Windows on my gaming desktop (inb4 go to DTR, I know, I know. This is happening on my notebook too), and so after installing the obligatory Vista updates and avast! antivirus, the first thing I do is fire up Steam and start downloading my games.

I logged into Steam after installing (which took over 4 minutes, by the way, definitely not a good sign). After ten minutes or so of platform updates, I finally get to my Games page. I start with Half-Life 2, which is about 3.5GB. Normally, I get download speeds between 700 and 1,000 KB/s, and the entire download of Half-Life 2 takes around three hours.

The problem: I started the download yesterday at 10 in the morning, and it's currently 2 in the afternoon, well over 24 hours later. Half-Life 2 is at 33%. I haven't seen the download rate go past 17.0 KB/s, and in some cases, it just completely stops. Also worth noting, I was online most of the day yesterday, and saw it slowly creep along from 0 to 29% before I went to bed yesterday. I left the computer and Steam on overnight, but apparently Steam stopped downloading at some point in the middle of the night, because between going to bed and waking up, Half-Life 2 had downloaded one percent.

So, is anyone else getting these obnoxiously slow downloads on Steam? I'm fairly certain it's not my connection; it's high speed cable internet, and regular downloads in Firefox are as fast as they've always been.

 

I am new to steam. I just bought the orange box which is my first steam game. I installed the steam and it was taking ages to open(more than 10 minutes) and it keeps stopping in the middle of the download. After reading some threads in the steam forums I decided to reinstall the steam. After reinstalling, everything works fine. The download is the maximum I can get with my internet speed. I suggest you to reinstall steam and see what happens.

This is just my experience in 5 days with steam.

S.almajid

 

Alright, I think I may try that. That's just never happened to me before, and I've installed Steam probably 5 times with this computer. Ah well, first time for everything.

 

Must be the 24hr FREE L4D today. Speeds might go up after it's over~ It was the same during the free UT3 a while back as well.

 

Also remember that they have a free L4D 24hour. The servers are getting hammered pretty bad whenever they have those kind of events. I remember not being able to pre-load UTIII at all when they had the free weekend...

 

Reinstall didn't really help.

I think I'll just use my 250GB external and back up my games from my notebook where they're already installed and updated, and restore them to my desktop. No intertubes required!

 

It's probably just the free L4D weekend, all the tubes are blocked.

Another thing you can try is making sure your firewall is not impeding Steam, you can also port forward Steam on your router.

 

I've already got my firewall set up to allow Steam. As for the router, it's my school's dorm network so there's not much I can do about that.

 

Yea, I'm sure this is why everything is slow on Steam today. Whenever they have a "free play" day, their servers are usually very strained.

 

So, the Left 4 Dead freebie day is over, so I thought it would be reasonably safe to start re-downloading Unreal Tournament 3...it's been an hour now, I'm still at 0%, and I haven't seen it go above 20KB/s. Thoughts?

 

You might want to try changing your download region.

Open Steam: File > Settings > Downloads > Download Region

The thing is, you DON'T always want the nearest download region. For downloading, latency DOES NOT MATTER. For instance, I'm in Boston, when I choose the US-New York Region, I get really crappy download speeds.

When I choose the China or Singapore (currently using Singapore) region, my download speeds shoot way up. I think this is due to the fact that the download regions I choose from (eastern asia) usually have low utilization, unlike all of the US servers, which are always being pounded.

So try a couple different download servers, including those on other continents!

Also make sure your "Approximate speed of your internet" setting is set reasonably (DSL/Cable > 2M, for instance)

 

mine is like 500kb/s atm

 

6.1 KB/s...argh. Thanks StormEffect, I'll try changing the download location.

EDIT - Default location was Atlanta, and I'm in Ohio...I'll try New York first, that's the closest.

EDIT again - New York was no better, trying Singapore...

More EDIT - Maxed out at 22 KB/s instead of 20. Improvement. >_<

 

Usually you shouldn't do this unless things are actually broken, but you can try going into your Steam folder and deleting the ClientRegistry.blob file. Make sure you turn off Steam first, and let your computer sit for 30 seconds before deleting the file. Then wait a few more seconds and turn Steam back on. It will rebuild the ClientRegistry.blob file, and it may improve your download speeds.

Edit: I am testing my Boston to Singapore connection and am getting 500kb/s downloading Lost Planet.

 

have you tried speedtest.net ? It could be your anti virus or firewall limiting the game's network as well, or a router issue. Steam isn't having issues, mine downloads full speed as with everyone else here.

 

I'm downloading Portal @ 620KB/s.

 

I don't even have an antivirus installed right now, this is a two-day old format. And I've temporarily disabled Windows Firewall.

According to speedtest.net, I have 3.3Mbps down and 0.21Mbps/210Kbps up. That's certainly acceptable, although according to the bar graph on the site, that's well below half of the average for my ISP.

Leads me to believe it's definitely a Steam issue. My connection gets me 3.3Mbps down, but Steam is only getting 0.02Mbps/20Kbps.

 

When I disable avira it seems to speed up a bit....

 

I just learned from my uncle (the administrator of the house network while I'm here at home) that he manually limited the download rate of every computer in the house, including mine, to 20Kbps, which seems to go perfectly hand in hand with what I've been experiencing with Steam. He says he did this because our ISP, RoadRunner, is starting to overcharge people who go over a predetermined, arbitrary, and unspecified bandwidth limit per month.

He says he'll uncap mine for 24 hours so I can finish updating Steam, and says I'd better pray that I don't have any more downloads coming up bigger than a few MB. :/

 

UPDATE

He removed all download restrictions from the network, and I re-ran the Speedtest.net test:



I rebooted and started Steam up again, and this time it's a bit faster, but still barely over 100Kbps, estimating 23 hours or so to finish downloading.