This topic

BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:22:15 GMT

Feel like I need to come on here for some advice/assistance regarding my new BT FTTP 900.

I had fibre installed in my house, excited to be able to download games at a better speed other than 8MBps. They installed the fibre, I connected my PC via a Cat7 Ethernet cable and amazingly hitting 115MBps download on Steam/Epic/Battlenet etc which is great.

My problem is that only lasts for 30 seconds then plummets down to about 20MBps and then doesn’t go back up. If I stop the download and start it again it does the exact same thing. Firstly I thought it was my SSD so I pointed it at another drive - this was a HDD so only hitting like 60MBps but then plummeting again. I refuse to believe it’s my PC that’s the problem as I’m running a very high end CPU and GPU, I’ve got 32GB ram so it’s definitely not hardware.

I tried 2 other devices, one laptop and one MacBook and both are doing the exact same.

So my question is, do BT throttle downloads on games after a certain time or is there a problem with my connection? I’ve seen a few posts that BT do throttle and can set a parameter on your Hub.

My problem with this is that my previous package was 54mbps-75mbps, and so I was only getting 8MBps download and now I’m only getting like double that when actually downloading which is disgusting considering im paying a hell of a lot more 😞

Can anyone suggest what to do?

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

licquorice — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:36:20 GMT

BT do not throttle downloads. What leads you to think that the problem lies with BT and not the game server?

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:39:21 GMT

Because I’ve tried multiple different game launchers and different games. I’ve also tried large downloads on chrome and displaying the exact same symptoms.

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

-Richie- — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:43:35 GMT

@ScottieBoiwrote:
So my question is, do BT throttle downloads on games after a certain time or is there a problem with my connection? I’ve seen a few posts that BT do throttle and can set a parameter on your Hub.

No, BT do not throttle any downloads or have any restrictions with the exception of sites ordered blocked by the high court.

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:45:29 GMT

Okay that’s all well and good, any ideas what it could be then? I’m a network engineer myself so I’m not unfamiliar with troubleshooting steps but this is making me scratch my head… I’ve done the obvious rebooting devices etc but still no idea

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

licquorice — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:48:18 GMT

See message 2

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

-Richie- — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:54:50 GMT

It could be a number of things, the CDN source for the downloads is at capacity, it could be compression as the downloads are unpacked (certainly impacts FTP downloads), bad sectors on your HDD.

Steam downloads for me will also rise and fall, I had a few downloads scheduled, I set them away and the results vary

My download settings if it helps, location chosen is London even though I'm North-East

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

iniltous — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:00:32 GMT

Hopefully you are aware the difference between MB/s and Mb/s….20MB is 160Mb.
If you want a guaranteed 900Mb download service 24/7 then a domestic FTTP service from anyone isn’t going to provide it, you need a much more expensive leased line, but even that won’t get around bottlenecks elsewhere .

You are on a system that has 2.4Gb of download bandwidth, and you are one of up-to 29 others ‘sharing’ this bandwidth….if you were allowed to ‘hog’ 25% of the bandwidth , that would affect others if there is lots of demand at the time , it wouldn’t be fair on the others , and what if there happened to be another another ‘gamer’ like you on the same PON , let you and them have 1.8Gb and upto 28 others share what’s left ?, it’s a dynamic allocation, if you are downloading at peak times you won’t get 900Mb ( or 112.5MB if you prefer ) constantly, you may ‘burst’ at this speed but not have it constantly

As already stated , the bottleneck , if you call it that may not even be on what Openreach or BT are responsible for , there will be finite resources at the server and it will also determine its own download rate depending on demand .

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:02:07 GMT

I absolutely know the difference between Mb/s and MB/s - I am a network engineer so if I didn’t know then I’d be very concerned 🙂 I agree that there will be a shared line, but should it really be dropping to a 5th of what I’m supposed to be getting? I’m paying around £25 more to just get double the download speed? I would’ve been better off just sticking with my copper

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

iniltous — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 10:32:38 GMT

If you haven’t already , try downloading something at what would be typically a quieter time , say after 11pm , if you get the same burst of Gb type speed, then settles to around 160Mb/s it’s most likely to be a limit imposed by the game server, try a third party speed tester at the same time , compare the results, or download something then simultaneously watch a VOD stream

As already stated , there isn’t throttling, or any traffic shaping by BT , although it’s likely there are measures taken to ‘share’ equitably the Openreach PON bandwidth ( the 2.4Gb ) at times of high demand

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/bt-s-approach-to-broadband-traffic-management

As far as price , a 1Gb leased line would be something like 7-10 times more expensive than domestic ‘900Mb’ FTTP , and as said would only really eliminate one potential bottleneck , chances are you could do various things simultaneously on your FTTP, download a game , watch a couple of Netflix streams , browsing, email etc and have a better experience than doing this on your FTTC connection, even if your FTTC connection was pretty decent,

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 13:08:18 GMT

Thanks for this,

I did actually try at different points during the day, tried at 10am, 1pm and 12am and getting the same result unfortunately. I can’t see it being the same game server purely because I tried different game launchers and different games and all are displaying the same symptoms. 20MB/s download seems really slow even from a bandwidth standpoint just because I get 115MB/s and that’s literally a 6th of the speed which is baffling to me.

I didn’t have any issues with my FTTC before other than download speed, I could stream videos, Netflix etc all at the same time without any issues. As it currently stands it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the money so might need to phone BT tonight and see what they can suggest. As it currently stands I’m looking at getting my money back

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

licquorice — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 13:16:05 GMT

No ISP guarantees download speeds, only sync speeds.

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

iniltous — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:08:12 GMT

TBH , not experiencing the same issue when you were on FTTC is not a surprise, after all the ‘low’ speed you complain of is way in excess of what your FTTC could ever deliver ( 160Mb is not possible with FTTC ) .

If you experienced ‘capped’ game server download at varying times of the day , including historically quiet periods , then it’s not going to be congestion on the PON , so the 2.4Gb download is more than capable of the demand placed on it , and as shown , BT have no ‘policy’ to limit your connection throughput , so that leaves either some transit type providers or the host servers , non of which are your ISP’s responsibility.

As stated , if you believe that your throughput is being restricted to 160Mb, download from the normal game server at 160Mb , while that is running , do something else relatively demanding, watch a 4K stream , ( AFAIK about 25Mb ) or a few , if the 160Mb doesn’t reduce by the ‘extra’ demand these streams place on your connection, and the other items ‘play’ without issue , you have kind of proved that there isn’t a 160Mb throughput ‘limit’ set by BT or OR , obviously you could do this with many sources , right up to the minimum speed guarantee, which on 900Mb is something like 450-550Mb ?

If you feel that the undoubtedly ‘better’ performance has turned out to not being what you expected, and that’s probably you having unrealistic expectations, I’m not sure your ISP will agree to changing anything , if there isn’t actually anything ‘wrong’.

Explore the game server T&C’s , perhaps they reserve the right to limit download speed to balance out demand and give a consistent service to their customers

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

NigelB72 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:41:04 GMT

@ScottieBoi Steam throttle downloads as standard but I believe that you can change some settings to lift it slightly but it's definitely not BT throttling anything. Check the steam forums etc for help improving your download speeds.

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:57:55 GMT

Just need to reiterate, it’s not Steam that’s the problem here. It’s not any sort of platform that downloads games. It’s something going on with the stability of the download speed entirely. It’s happening on browsers & game platforms. I have checked the specific parts of the clients and they’re not set to anything so they’re not causing any throttling. Just confused how BT are going to sell you 900Mb/s and not give that to you as a constant download.

I understand the whole PON thing now and that it’s 2.4Gbps between various users but it’s just a bit worrying that’s it’s not made clear when buying their product - essentially I’m now only getting 160Mbps download at a maximum when before I was getting between 54-75

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

licquorice — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 15:05:36 GMT

Have you actually tried the suggestion made by @iniltous in message 13?

Is your total download speed reduced to 160Mbps or just the portion from Steam?

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

Checked2013 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 18:40:04 GMT

Whenever there is someone with slow speeds with FTTP on this forum, out comes loads of posts about how FTTP is heavily shared between connections and the blame goes on there mainly by people that have never had FTTP or even used it.

The first question would be are all downloads slow regardless of which website or service being used? Has the CAT 7 cable been tested? Most CAT 7 cables that you can buy are substandard. I'm sure there are other things to test to rather than blaming FTTP, come on guys

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

jas20001978 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:49:21 GMT

I so believe this to be the case. I have 900 Mbps fibre and with steam would always achieve speeds of around 820 - 850 Mbps any time of the day. I have an ASUS rapture 6e router and mesh system and my PC is connected to the router with a 2.5 Gig connection.

Whenever a speed test is conducted I always get around 880 - 890 Mbps but when downloading I now only achieve at max 400 Mbps. My iPhone 14 also achieves around 880 Mbps on Wi-Fi 6e. We have four high end PCs and it’s the same on all of them as it is on Xbox series X. All devices are connected via a 2.5 g switch with Ethernet in every room. All pcs have a motherboard with 2.5g Ethernet connection. This is also confirmed in the network setting me of the operating system.

A neighbour using ogi internet using a bog standard Amazon router is seeing around 900Mbps on Steam downloads.

Interestingly a ogi salesman cold called a few months back and he said he used to work for openreach and they overload their networks. I said be gone with you and I have stayed with BT.

Strange but seemingly true.

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

ScottieBoi — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:25:03 GMT

I’m glad you agree with me here!

Re: BT Throttling Game downloads

licquorice — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:11:38 GMT

Have you actually performed the tests suggested to discover where the problem lies?