Download slow on Steam?

[William]

I just purchased BC2 Pack today on steam for a great price of $9.99. But when I try to download it, it gets upto about 650 kb/s download speed but then drops down to 0 kb/s in about 10 seconds. It then hangs out there at 0 for a minute or two. Then it will repeat the same thing. I can hit he pause button and then resume download, but it will do the same thing going upto about 650 then dropping back to 0.

Is this normal, or is there a setting or something. I did go to the settings and set up my connection speed as the fastest.

I have Comcast as provider and my package is 20mb download speed and like 5mb or something upload.

Thanks for any info/help

-William

[Carm]

I think this nearly always happens on Steam Specials everyone is frantically buying up games on the cheap and downloading them ........... a lot of ppl have been complaining how slow it is even after checking their settings - downloads+cloud tab to ensure they are using the server closest to them.. I would give it time and see if it settles down once the summer special finishes ....

[William]

Thanks Carm

I can understand because of it being last day of the summer special thing. But I was just making sure something I'm not doing wrong because download would completely stop for a minute or two.

Thanks again,
-William

[Carm]

Yeah I had the same issue with a download the other day but I just left it running overnight and it was in the next morning

[Draadnor]

Mine also stops for a period of time (up to 30 seconds). My maximum I'm getting from Bigpond Valve servers is 100KB/s (totally sux - in the past I've gotten up to 1000KB/s) but generally it is 50KB/s.

Sometimes Steam is hunting for a better server and that is why it seemingly stops for a bit. If you wanted to have a look then use TCPView to see what Steam is upto.

[Bort]

Yeah, I get fairly awful speeds, and fluctuates up and down (from awful down to horrendous, and back).

Tried to change servers, doesnt make much difference.

Like Carm, I just let it go overnight and its good. Just annoying when you know you should be getting a lot better.

[Draadnor]

I put a complaint in to Gamearena and am waiting for a sensible reply.

[Reoh]

With the steam sale ending, hopefully in another week or so it'll pick up. My theory is they're getting bottlenecked outside their network (on account of their steam server pages showing plenty of bandwidth left).

[Kasper]

I changed my location to US - Atlanta and have been getting up to 500KB/s, but average is around the 250KB/s. Still better than 30KB/s that I was getting using an Aussie location. (Tried a few)

[Reoh]

After the Steam patch last night I noticed I'm getting up over 200KB/s. Which got me thinking (*puts on conspiracist hat*) There was a patch just before the Summer Sale where our speeds went to crap just after now that I think about it.

Chance or co-incidence? :P