This pertains more to non US/Canadian users, its more for those Steam users that do not have many content servers in thier country.
I sent an e-mail because of the problem me and other South African users were experiencing, namely the fact Steam would use a international content server rather than the local server provided by a local gaming community - as you can guess its far more preferable that Steam use the local content server than the international ones.
The comments in blue and preceded by ***'s are made by Rick .
Are there any plans to divide the Steam Content Servers by region (America's, Asia, Europe, Africa etc.) and allow the user to choose which region he/she would prefer to use with Steam? If not why not?
Please note: I suggested something similar before, but my suggestion was to choose the actual server. It was explained that Valve did not desire this because this would cause some servers to be overloaded and others to be underutilized...but note I modified my suggestion to allow users to select the desired region, thus Steam could use any of the servers in that selected region.
*** Yes this is already part of the design. We have a "cellular" approach where at some point, we will place users on CS's based upon their locale. This will allow users in say Korea to use content servers IN Korea, not the US.
If you are curious why I am asking, imagine you have a connection type that is good locally (downloads at say 50 k / sec) but a bad international connection (0.05 k / sec), you can see why I would prefer to try get Steam to download locally. I can't see why not as there a perfectly good local content server (SGS) where I live (South Africa).
The inability to select or to influence which content server/s Steam uses causes a lot of problems with your international fans, and communities...imagine not being able to play <insert fave mod here> over a weekend because Steam refuses to use the local content server.
*** We actually have the tech for selecting a CS as well, however as you mention there are serious problems with allowing users to sidestep the load balancing system.
Now I am sure Valve never intended to alienate their international fans, and these problems are merely lack of foresight.
*** Yes we certainly are not trying to alienate anyone, it's more of a matter of a getting the system to an even further level of maturity before we can implement some of our original design decisions.
*** Rick
*** Valve
Thanks for your time
I sent an e-mail because of the problem me and other South African users were experiencing, namely the fact Steam would use a international content server rather than the local server provided by a local gaming community - as you can guess its far more preferable that Steam use the local content server than the international ones.
The comments in blue and preceded by ***'s are made by Rick .
Are there any plans to divide the Steam Content Servers by region (America's, Asia, Europe, Africa etc.) and allow the user to choose which region he/she would prefer to use with Steam? If not why not?
Please note: I suggested something similar before, but my suggestion was to choose the actual server. It was explained that Valve did not desire this because this would cause some servers to be overloaded and others to be underutilized...but note I modified my suggestion to allow users to select the desired region, thus Steam could use any of the servers in that selected region.
*** Yes this is already part of the design. We have a "cellular" approach where at some point, we will place users on CS's based upon their locale. This will allow users in say Korea to use content servers IN Korea, not the US.
If you are curious why I am asking, imagine you have a connection type that is good locally (downloads at say 50 k / sec) but a bad international connection (0.05 k / sec), you can see why I would prefer to try get Steam to download locally. I can't see why not as there a perfectly good local content server (SGS) where I live (South Africa).
The inability to select or to influence which content server/s Steam uses causes a lot of problems with your international fans, and communities...imagine not being able to play <insert fave mod here> over a weekend because Steam refuses to use the local content server.
*** We actually have the tech for selecting a CS as well, however as you mention there are serious problems with allowing users to sidestep the load balancing system.
Now I am sure Valve never intended to alienate their international fans, and these problems are merely lack of foresight.
*** Yes we certainly are not trying to alienate anyone, it's more of a matter of a getting the system to an even further level of maturity before we can implement some of our original design decisions.
*** Rick
*** Valve
Thanks for your time
