Why does Steam have a maximum download speed of 170 Mbps?
Why does Steam have a maximum download speed of 170 Mbps?
I know I keep getting asked this question again and again, but nobody ever gets a real answer. I have a desktop gaming PC hooked up via ethernet, and my internet plan is 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps) for both sending and receiving data at all times except the afternoon when lots of people use the network, which makes it slow down to around 750 Mbps. When I used speedtest on my computer through a web browser or the Windows app, everything was going fast—around 900 to 1000 Mbps for both sending and receiving. Steam used to download things at those high speeds usually ranging from about 800 Mbps to 900 Mbps. But lately, over the last year or so, my Steam application won't let me download anything faster than roughly 170 Mbps. I've cleared all cache files, changed which parts of the world get priority when downloading things, turned off my firewall, checked with my internet provider that they aren't slowing down my connection from their servers, and even opened up some ports on my router. Nothing works for me. I also moved houses a while ago and switched internet providers during that whole process, but the problem is still here. My friends download things on Steam at gig speeds all the time. If anyone has any advice or tips to help me out, please let them know. One of the main reasons I pay for gigabit internet is so I can download huge games in a hurry without waiting around forever. It takes 1.5 hours to download 115 GB at 170 Mbps, instead of only about 20 minutes or less with gig speeds. Here are my PC parts: CPU: Intel i7-10700K (I set the speed limit on it to 4.5GHz) GPU: EVGA FTW3 ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 3080 with 10GB of video memory Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Plus ATX LGA1200 RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 2x16GB (32GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD Storage: WD Black SN750 1TB m.2 NVMe SSD Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2TB 7200RPM hard drive https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8g9rxs - There is a full list of my parts here on the site I use Blue Ridge Mountain EMC for my internet connection. My old internet provider was Comcast, and I used their gateway. My router is the NETGEAR Nighthawk Smart Wi-Fi Router (R7000) that has AC1900 speed. I am the only person living in my house and I have full control over things on this computer. When I checked my computer settings with ipconfig, here are the important bits: Realtek PCIe 2.5GbE Family Controller Physical Address is **** DHCP Enabled was Yes Autoconfiguration was also yes Link-local IPv6 Address was **** (Preferred) IPv4 Address was **** (Preferred) Subnet Mask was 255.255.255.0 Lease Obtained on Friday, March 17, 2023 at 5:06 AM and the lease expires on Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 5:06 AM The default gateway for my computer is 192.168.1.1 The DHCP Server was also 192.168.1.1 For DNS Servers it said **** DHCPv6 IAID **** And the DHCPv6 Client DUID was **** There was no NetBIOS over Tcpip enabled during downloads, my PC experience no processing spikes while doing things like downloading but it does not heat up the SSDs while writing or reading.
Update your post with all system specs, OS info, ISP details, modem model, router model, and whether it is wired or wireless. Check Task Manager and Resource Monitor for more data. Use both tools but only one at a time while browsing online or playing games to see what changes happen when downloads slow down. Look through the router logs if they are available and turned on. Tell us who has full admin rights so we can ask them for help. Run "ipconfig /all" in Command Prompt (without quotes) and paste the results here now.
Show me a picture of your Steam screen with the transfer speed so I can see it clearly.
Even though people think an MAC address is unique, it's actually not always true. If you work for a company buying thousands of similar laptops, you will see duplicates happen over time. It does not matter, but hiding this isn't worth the trouble. This must be something different about how steam runs on your machine. It can't just be your router or anything outside your computer because ISPs don't really know what speedtest or steam is; they are both just data bits traveling through wires. You also found this when you moved and used a new ISP with the same problem. While some routers let you set traffic limits, it's hard to do that properly because steam uses many different server IPs to download from. I should check if you have something like that. First, try turning off IPv6 just in case steam uses one while speedtest uses another. The main difference between them is that speedtest runs through your browser on HTTPS, while steam uses its own app. I don't know exactly which port steam might be using right now. My first guess is if there are any programs on your machine doing network quality control (QoS). There is a lot of junk software bundled with motherboards and graphics cards that tries to favor gaming traffic over other things. A common name is CFOSpeed but I will uninstall anything that talks about preferring certain traffic types over others. This is hard because there isn't an easy way to remove all Windows bloat without lots of work. Steam runs on Linux, but using the standard boot Linux from a USB won't help because you still need to install steam and find places to download files just for testing. You don't want to hurt your original Windows installation. It almost certainly means some software in Windows is limiting things. Maybe I should test against other speedtest servers in different cities, but that would be worse if I found a real issue because my internet provider's internal connections can't change.
I put together a bunch of computers back in my day and run Windows all the time. On these machines, the one thing I always have to get out of the way is a program called CFosSpeed. That's what MSI put there when they made me buy the computer. Every single day, I look at it and make sure it's actually gone before moving on.
MAC addresses are all different and don't matter who made the computer, only the chip maker inside it matters. When a network card first starts making stuff, it gets a special code (like a memory stick) written into it that can never be changed. This code follows the MAC-48 standard which means 48 bits long. Each company has its own set of codes to use. Here are some example codes from famous chip makers like Intel for their devices or RealTek, Broadcom for theirs. Every computer system's part in charge of talking over the wire is responsible for handling these lower-level messages and can change that physical code it found on the card using a different one instead. Apple and other companies now use this trick where they randomly change those codes so others can't track things like cell phones by seeing what network address the device uses. If you want to find out all the codes from all the chip makers, here is a list of them online.
Hey OP, don't use the speedtest app right away. Other people already know about it, so their internet provider sees you using those tools and treats that traffic differently than normal stuff. Try doing something else instead, like picking a spot further away from your house or on a different network. Maybe just pick up some steam games to download there if you need speed. Steam might also slow things down depending on how busy the place is or where you are.