This topic

BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 22:14:20 GMT

Hey

BT Full Fibre 900 Customer - All testing done wired directly to bt hub

Downloading with steam/epic/origin etc (game downloads and similar downloads) will diminish download speeds to 5-6MB/s

Couple examples:

Steam download hovering around 4-6MB/s, turning on VPN, it jumps to anything from 50-100MB/s

Downloading a visual studio update from microsoft sitting at 50-100MB/s, unpausing a download in the epic launcher immediately drops download rate on both apps to the same 4-6MB/s. Hitting pause again and visual studio download rate jumps back to normal as if nothing happened. (This behaviour can also be resolved again but turning on a vpn, then both download at the limit of my real internet speed).

I have verified it's not a cpu/ram limitation on the pc, I've a fairly high specc'ed PC and usage on ram/cpu are 20-30% at their highest when testing.

My actual unthrottled speed is anything from ~700-930 verified in many speedtests (note: if I leave a game download in for e.g. Epic downloading at 4-5MB/s and then run a speedtest it gets like 50mb/s instead of the usual 700-900)

For a control:

As prior mentioned, visual studio updates, can hit 90+MB/s

Downloading ubuntu via torrent: 90+ MB/s

This seems like pretty cut and dry evidence that BT is traffic shaping/throttling certain downloads. But from what I've seen BT state they do no such thing.

What's my outcome here, I'm currently having to pay for a vpn to get full use of the internet service I pay for

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

Carlusha — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 22:43:22 GMT

@oij09823dlj2k3d23d

While we're waiting for one of the experts to assist, may I congratulate you on having the weirdest forum user IDs I have ever come across! 😲

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 23:01:11 GMT

I may have just mashed the keyboard after my go to usernames were taken 😂

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

pippincp — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 23:52:44 GMT

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I suspect you had and were paying for a VPN anyway just like I have.

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

NigelB72 — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 05:31:03 GMT

Check your settings in Steam because by default, it's Steam that throttles downloads according to a quick Google search.

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 08:00:29 GMT

Steam settings uncapped, same for origin/epic. Even if it was on however, it wouldn't explain the drop in overall Internet performance, or atleast to this extent

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 08:01:21 GMT

Used a friend's vpn login to try it out after they mentioned trying it, now I have my own subscription

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 20:13:01 GMT

Does anyone else have this behaviour?

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

armstrongmans — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:06:13 GMT

No problems at all. I can confirm I get full unthrottled speeds in steam/Epic/Rockstar/Battlenet etc on Fibre 500. Even yesterday there was a 57GB update for Cold war and that finished in no time in the background while I was browsing. No VPN was used.

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

oij09823dlj2k3d23d — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:10:47 GMT

Well I'm stumped then, I'll try some other machines and see if it makes a difference

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

armstrongmans — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:14:27 GMT

I also randomly do speed test any time of the day I always get the speeds they advertise for the speed I signed up for. Top service from BT I can say! I also use mine own router with port forwarding so I might also be a contributing factor, not sure.