terrible connection speeds w/ Steam running

[lollavid]

I am utterly confused here- when I ping HL servers from ASE (all seeing eye) or on the web, I get very repsectable latency/ ping levels. As soon as I run Steam, my pings increase about 10X what they were before it was running and I can't play any games online.
I just subscribed and so this is a noob question and I would very much appreciate the help. I have tried opening the ports- it didn't help. I should also note that it is not just gaming that is slowed down- my dsl speed drops to lower than a dial-up with Steam running...
ANY IDEAS?
thanks

 

[Trinityxero]

steam sucks hard... end of story...


seriously... its probly something in steam like a bug... its ptoblu just your connection ... your to far away or your ISP stinks (mine stinks)

 

[lollavid]

hmmm...

I know my dsl connection isn't the best (256k down), but even with servers located in my city (Salt Lake City) it is so bad. It can't be right that I am pinging most servers at ~1500. I play battlefield vietnam and ping around 100. again, the problem only occurs as soon as Steam is on- if I ping servers outside of Steam (like All Seeing Eye), then I get similar pings to those of battlefield games. What the heck is going on???

 

[^Ben]

Check if it aint updating a game.

Or preload HL2

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

steam sucks hard... end of story...

Yeah because its always steams fault.

 

[lollavid]

well, I'M not updating any games as far as I can see... And DiSTuRbEd- i am fully humbled to the idea that I may be at fault here (i know the comment wasn't directed at me, but I just like flaunting my humility- lol) and so I am still struggling with this stupid things. Ben- you're post seems likely (particularly because it slows ALL connection speeds down when it's opened), but like I said, I see nothing to indicate a download...

ugh!

 

[Varsity]

There's a similar thread here.

- What's your Steam connection settings?
- If Steam is usung bandwidth the tray icon will change. You saw the updating icon when you first installed, is it the same now?

 

[lollavid]

thx, varsity. i just went to the icon and clicked on "monitor" and it is indeed downloading counter-strike. i don't get it because i've had it installed now for 3 days and it should be complete, not to mention i tried to download counter-strike over night (it said it would take something like 8 hours, which is strange since every other game took about 20-30 minutes) and i woke up this morning to see it stuck on 1% left. hopefully if i leave steam on it will finish...

 

[woodicw]

Im having pretty much the same trouble. I can't see most of the servers when I try to find the servers in a game, and the ones I do see have pretty normal ping rates until I try to join them and hit the refresh button on the join box it jumps up to 2000. I tryed removing steam.exe and hl.exe from zone alarm and re-adding them, but to no avail. I haven't been able to play any of the games for like 2 weeks.