cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
2,429 Views
Message 1 of 11

BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings
10 REPLIES 10
2,418 Views
Message 2 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

@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! 😲

0 Ratings
2,407 Views
Message 3 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings
2,394 Views
Message 4 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings
2,380 Views
Message 5 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings
2,365 Views
Message 6 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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 

0 Ratings
2,364 Views
Message 7 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings
2,285 Views
Message 8 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

Does anyone else have this behaviour?

0 Ratings
2,216 Views
Message 9 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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.

0 Ratings
2,207 Views
Message 10 of 11

Re: BT Throttling Game Downloads

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

0 Ratings