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Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
As the title, before I purchased an XR500, downloading games using steam would see a slowdown on internet responsiveness for me and the household but only noticeable not annoying. Now with the XR500 Steam downloads quickly but webpages takes 3-4 seconds to download or start to download, other devices are more affected and it upsets everyone else! (a 40 minute new game download is now unacceptable)
This even affects this PC that is using steam, youtube videos stop and buffer, it never used to do this (with the dumb router).
I have no QOS features currently enabled in the XR500 (the old ISP router didn't have QOS settings) Can I fix steam downloads so they don't bork the web for everyone else? (Also not mess up steam gaming later)
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
Sorry, but this hasn't solved my issues. The main steam machine (this PC) now downloads more slowly even if no other device is in use..
When other devices are used the huge delay is still present...?
So on my dumb router steam dl at around 8.4MBs but other devices can surf just fine AND the steam download slows down somewhat, everything is good.
On the XR500 with QOS set to 70% download and upload (of benched internet speed) (always mode) The steam machine is always slower (than maximum) now capped at 6.4MBs but other devices are crippled with 500Kbs of throughput for 2-3 seconds then around 25mbit.
Then if you re-do the speed test the same behaviour occurs. I used my iphone se2020, a quest2 and the firestick4k. same behaviour.. very slow for a few seconds then it picks up. (this doesn't occur on the dumb router)
I'm using fast.com with retry on the other devices. (through respective browsers) stopping steam downloads there is NO 2-3 seconds of 500kbps slowness. (although it does trend up, the test starts immediately and starts at 10+Mbps) Notably more performant.
What should I look at to improve this behaviour? As it stands I loose maximum download speeds for the heavy downloads and incur an unacceptable delay before being allocated some bandwidth for others.
The steam downloading PC is the only wired device.
quest2 has exclusive use of 5ghz (for airlink usually)
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
Congestion Control by design does limit your speeds based on the percentage you set to ensure downloads etc can't saturate the connection and cause you to lag. 70% is a recommended starting point but it doesn't work for everyone so we encourage people to experiment with the percentage to find what works best for them. As you want higher speeds try higher than 70% to see if it gives you a better balance. What is the model of the modem/router the XR is connected to and are ALL devices connected to the XR?
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
its connected to the bt hub (i think they call it a hub6) I've got the XR500 as the DMZ client. The XR500 handles NAT upnp dhcp dns is passed to the bt hub. All devices connected to the XR500, 1 wired PC (steam PC), quest 2 on 5ghz (exclusive for airlink), all others on 2.4ghz
Although the XR500 is behind a NAT already, it is a DMZ client so all external traffic should go to it. (specify MAC address of the XR500 to the BT hub)
I've disabled QOS as it seems to do little of help.. The QOS does seem to portion a slice of bandwidth by ensuring the steam PC doesn't saturate the entire bandwidth but the other devices still suffer a long delay for their web requests.. so the reserved bandwidth isn't made available to the other clients in a timely fashion.
What I'm having a hard time understanding that my old dumb router just handled this as I'd expect. I still can use my old router (a 3 year old AC wifi router from plusnet) using the same setup as the XR500. (as the BT router has had it radios disabled and I don't care for or trust my ISP)
btw I am using hybrid VPN (so it has a VPN connection made but the single client isn't active during testing)
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
Disable Traffic Prioritization completely (any manual rules + DumaOS Classified Games) and see if that improves it at all, how long is the delay roughly?
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
Hi, yes that was my original configuration before using QOS..
I was able to see that Steam downloads are considered gaming under the network monitor, I then enabled always on congestion control but left it at 100% then set bandwidth allocation for games to "0"
I then tested on my hardwired PC the following: steam downloaded at nearly full speed 8.4MB/s as the only device and program in use. Then I started a speedtest on the same PC and it quickly rose to 70Mbits/s and the steam download reduced. This is what I wanted! yay!
However the other devices seem still to be slow... the same delay when starting the test..
With my iphone I had it run a ping to 8.8.8.8 using an app. The pings would be around 23ms until steam starts then the pings would shoot to 200-400ms.. I tried a 50% congestion limit and steam slowed to half but the phone although being able to get a higher speedtest (7.3Mbps to 25 Mbps) still had very high pings of around 250ms to 8.8.8.8
reducing the congestion control to a silly 10% (which gives a warning 😉 the iphones ping would only climb to 63ms..
So the issue may not be bandwidth allocation but DNS response times? DNS is forwarded to the BT modem but clients are allocated the XR500's address. (10.0.0.1) I understand that a ping isn't a DNS request, it just uses udp, like DNS... I'm saying DNS as this may explain the poor response of the other clients in spite of bandwidth availability.
of course I'm guessing.. if you get through all this.. thanks 🙂
EDIT: also I couldn't find DNS in any bandwidth allocation application
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
reply to myself, nope none of that helps..
here is an example, I'm downloading conan exiles 100gig download... now while that is happening I go to download the nighthawk app from the ios store on my iphone at 200megabytes... 2 minutes later its not even 50% done!... I can run a speed test that shoots to 25mbit but downloading a 200mb file takes over 5 minutes?!>
the netowrk monitor says the iphone is downloading "media" at 7mbps then 0Mbps then 3 then 0.... Meanwhile "gaming" is just 99.9% of the ring! even though its got a 0.01Mbps of allocation... its using 70+Mbps!
I understand its a gaming router.. so maybe categorising steam downloads as "gaming" is the issue here! (as it has baked in top priority but is in fact downloading a game that will saturate to bandwidth unlike an actual multiplayer game would during gameplay!
Re: Downloading from Steam Cripples all other web traffic.
I know BT used to at least use PPPoE, is that still the case? Without disabling Share Excess on Bandwidth Allocation it can still exceed the allocation you give it, try disabling that and then allocate what you would prefer each device to have and see if that performs any better. Have you by any chance disabled WMM in Advanced WiFi settings? DNS is in Settings on the Internet Setup page, if DNS is set to the BT hub then manually setting it to another such as Google or Cloudflare could help. Thanks for the report that Steam downloads count as gaming, that is something I will pass onto the team to rectify.
