BT Throttling Game downloads

[ScottieBoi]

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 

[licquorice]

No ISP guarantees download speeds, only sync speeds.

[iniltous]

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 

[NigelB72]

@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.

[ScottieBoi]

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

[licquorice]

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?

[Checked2013]

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

[jas20001978]

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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.

[ScottieBoi]

I’m glad you agree with me here!

[licquorice]

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