Answer to: "Why is Steam freezing and dl'ing so slow?"

[Marauder]

Alright, I know, I will get flamed by forum nazi's who think it is their duty to reduced traffic on this board. Get lost guys, this isn't for you.

This is to answer a question I see many many topics asking. Why is steam freezing in menues for periods of time, and why is it downloading so darned slow?!

Answer: Content servers. The content servers are the very heart of Steam. Without them, you just have a useless user interface with no ability to play, download, and update. The content servers are currently flooded BEYOND CAPACITY because of the immense rush by over 100,000 players to download Steam and the games/mods. The content servers are even effecting your little menues, as for some reason it always connects to the server before opening another window. I can't explain why it does that, but oh well.

The servers are too full, wait a week and the startup-rush will be long over, and the content servers will be back to normal. :afro:

 

[koopa]

Originally posted by Marauder
The content servers are even effecting your little menues, as for some reason it always connects to the server before opening another window. I can't explain why it does that, but oh well.

Yes, that's the important question. I wondered if it was sending usage information back to Valve (no evidence for that, just a suggestion).

 

[Marauder]

During the BETA, it didn't do this as far as I know. But then again, content servers were not overloaded during the BETA. In a statement by one of the Valve guys earlier yesterday/today this entire issue was mentioned.

 

[koopa]

Strange, it doesn't seem any less or more responsive than it has always been to me (although downloads are a heck of a lot slower). Marauder, are you saying that they mentioned that it connects to the server before opening a window, or just commented on the lack of content servers?

 

[Marauder]

Essentially, both. Though I can't confirm that it actually does connect when going through menues. If I could find the post that has the link in it to the official statement, I will post it....

 

[fifty7var]

I know for a fact that when opening the games window, it checks for updates on available games, and possibly, in the non-beta, checks for access to those games as well.

The Friends network, and server window obviously also require communication with the servers as well.

Adam

 

[MjM]

whats gonna happen when lots of people want to play halflife 2 online?

thatll be in the realms of 'hundres of thousands', wont it?

Is steam gonna cope?

 

[tedge]

I hope Valve make it more robust in this respect. In a way its good that this problem shows up now, rather than further on down the line. I can understand a window not opening until it receives info from servers, but this ties up all the other windows too. It would be nice if you could still say, chat to friends or whatever, but the whole program freezes until the server responds.

 

[fifty7var]

The other thing to point out, and i believe this is the reason for the delay in releasing steam, is that the majority of the content servers were down.

The day of steam's release, there was only 600 Mbp/s bandwidth. A few weeks before that, there was at least 2000 Mbp/s allocated. So that is less then a third of what we were running at before.

Couple that fact with 100,000 people downloading almost 2 gigs of files at the same time, and you get .75 KB/s transfer rates for all the users.

In regards to HL2, and the use of bandwidth, the actual games do not stress the steam network. Communication in game is done between the clients and the server. This should be no different than playing one WON. Also, things like opening the game window have such an infinitesimal effect on the available bandwidth that it can be neglected.

So in conclussion, what needs to be done to get steam working up to speed, and should we worry about the hl2 release?

Providing more content servers go up in the comming weeks, things should be fine. Even if they don't, the majority of the steam users should all have HL and CS downloaded by the end of the week (think about how many people hit that initial rush). So the only thing stressing the system at that point should be the occasional download, maybe 10-50 games a day, and going down theoretically with time.

The HL2 release should go much smoother than the Steam release for 2 reasons. First, only around 2-5% of the people who downloaded steam will download HL2 via steam, expecially after how slow things have been this time. More bandwidth for me the way i see it. But also, there should be more content servers by that point.

Adam

 

[Marauder]

Geeze I wish this was over. I cant even start dod, even though it shows it is supposedly done downloading. It goes to the screen "Preparing to launch..." and stops there, even after 20 minutes.

 

[Typhon]

it also appears to want to constantly download the same content over and over again...which is the only reason I can understand why I can run CS but it's still download CS files...