Potentially Unmetered STEAM!!!! info here

[Redgum]

Edit:If you read through the following posts you should find ways to target your steam downloads through your unmetered ISP mirror (if it has one).

Gday steamers!!

ive dabbled in steam and think it is pretty damn good. I have read, to my surprise, that for bigpond users it can be unmetered. Can someone show me(tell me) how to set it up so that this is the case.

Ive only got 12 gigs/month and the dl of games can be quite devastating on the quota.

Thanks in advance.

[Bikkies]

Never ending saga no one wins. Time wasted on it vs paying more(actually less) for a better plan.
Your choice for the options which are likely to follow for people who went through the same thing.

[King_Rocket]

Install steamwatch Redgum, it will ensure you only download from the GA steam server.

I have been using it for about a year now and its great.

Also use the Wally 3k SteamID lookup page to see if GA actually hosts the game your looking to download/buy.

[Redgum]

Bikkies - im on a regional exchange so dont have much (any) choice for ADSL2.

King!!! you champ I am downloading now.

[King_Rocket]

Also it doesn't hurt to have steam set to GA as your preferred server. Sometimes steam will "stall" when using steamwatch (normally this is due to the GA server being overloaded), just restart steam to get things moving again.

Depending on my purchases I pull down on average 10 gig unmetered a month.
Thanks to the L4D 2 demo, the L4D 2 Pre Load and buying Mass effect so far I have pulled down 19 gig from the GA server this month.

[MadMax]

I'd be happy to walk you through install and running of steamwatch, hit me up on steam, I am on the steam TOG groups, general and team fortress 2.

Essentially, go to the page mentioned earlier: SteamWatch 2

Download steamwatch 3.

Find it in your windows menu, and start it in the tray. Go down to the tray, right click and select edit settings I think it is. Edit the IP addresses so they are Gamearena servers IP addresses.

IP addresses for :
ga2.gamearena.com.au: 203.46.104.7
ga17.gamearena.com.au: 203.46.104.8

Simply add those 2 IP addresses, not the names.

Then make sure steamwatch is running before you do a download.

Also you can download tcpview program ( TCPView for Windows ) and run that and it will show what is connecting, and watch it try different steam content servers and then try another, and settle on a ga server. Peace of mind.

hit me up on steam if you are still having trouble, need a hand.

[Mixa...]

Steamwatch used to be essential. However I believe it's no longer required. Steam has it's own built in download preference tool now. At work so can't check EXACT process but IIRC file/settings/downloads in steam brings up a list of content servers including bigpond internode and a few others. If your ISP doesn't offer unmetered you can still use this feature to select the nearest server for (hopefully) faster speeds

[Flibbs]

Mixa. Even if it's set to you ISP's server it will still pull part of the content from other, non ISP, servers. From watching connections while downloading it appears Steam does load balancing across servers and tries to use 2 or 3 servers. You can expect around only 50% to come from the preferred server for large downloads.

Steamwatch is still the best way to limit downloads to particular servers.

[Redgum]

Thanks for all the replies people.

I downloaded L4D2 demo and a) it didnt upset my quote - although the server was pretty jammed so had to restart steam a few times b) how much fun is that demo!!!

Rep points for all I can!

[King_Rocket]

Yeah the GA server will clog up now and then especially when something hot comes out. In the first few hours of the L4D2 Demo I had troubles getting it but I the end I won out.

I'm glad I was able to pre load the full game before the GA server melts down on release day.