#Test download speed from steam full#
#Test download speed from steam Pc#
#Test download speed from steam download#

Measurements were carried out over a 4-day period in August 2018.Īll of the major UK ISPs performed similarly when downloading from Steam. We carried out measurements from approximately 200 Whiteboxes distributed across the fastest 76Mbps FTTC (VDSL) from BT, Sky, TalkTalk, and Vodafone, and 200Mbps and 350Mps cable products from Virgin Media. This kind of analysis is easy to perform in SamKnows One, as multiple independent metrics can be added to a single chart.

#Test download speed from steam download#

In this instance, we were interested in comparing the download speed achieved to Steam’s CDN against the download speed achieved to our own high-capacity test servers. SamKnows One is our powerful internet performance measurement platform that sits in the cloud, with the capacity to analyse, visualise, and store vast quantities of data. How we used SamKnows One to analyse the resultsĪs always, we used SamKnows One to analyse the measurement data we collect and then compare it to our existing measurements.

The total download speed across all parallel TCP sessions.

The average round-trip latency to servers in the cell.

The average DNS lookup time for the servers in the cell.

The cell that served content for the user.

Our Steam measurement client captures the following information on each test run: Once the server lists and chunk lists have been obtained, the client fetches the chunks using six parallel TCP sessions for a fixed duration of ten seconds. We made use of an offload server to centrally collate server lists and chunk lists for each cell. Our Steam client mimics the behaviour of the real Steam client, by logging into the Steam network, retrieving its local Cell ID, and then looking up a list of available servers and chunks for the cell the user resides in. We’ve developed a measurement client for Steam that can run on SamKnows Whiteboxes and routers running the SamKnows Router SDK.

Using multiple parallel connections to multiple CDNs is a good way of working around congested paths between a user’s ISP and any one specific CDN. In our testing we found that the Steam client used six parallel TCP sessions. The Steam client downloads a game in “chunks” using multiple parallel TCP sessions to a selection of the servers in the user’s cell. Both are primarily served by Valve’s own CDN, with what appear to be backups using Stackpath (in Amsterdam) and Edgecast (in London). For example, the UK is split into two cells - London and Manchester. These ISP-specific customisations appear to bias users on these ISPs towards specific CDN locations rather than introduce caches inside their networks (like Netflix and YouTube do).Įach cell is allocated a list of approximately 20 servers, which may be distributed amongst multiple CDNs. Interestingly, customisations exist for specific ISPs like Verizon, Telus, and Shaw. For the curious among you, this mapping can be found here, and reveals a lot about their network topology.

Steam breaks the world up into “cells” and maps countries and regions to these cells. In fact, Steam uses multiple different CDNs simultaneously. In our testing so far, we’ve found that Steam uses Level3, Akamai, EdgeCast (Verizon), Stackpath (formally Highwinds) and their own CDN for content delivery. Some ISPs, such as MyRepublic in Australia, recognise the importance of Steam to gamers and use average Steam download speeds in their advertising.Īs might be expected, Steam makes extensive use of CDN (Content Delivery Networks) to deliver games to end users. At the time of writing, Steam’s peak network utilisation was 5.7Tbps (5,700Gbps) over the past week. With over 150 million registered users and games measuring in tens of gigabytes, it is easy to see how Steam generates a lot of traffic.

#Test download speed from steam full#

But the games delivered via Steam have increased in size dramatically over the years, with some games now exceeding 75GB! Even on a 100Mbps broadband connection, a 75GB game would take you around 2 hours to download (assuming you could consistently hit full available speed). Steam’s rise to becoming the leading online game distribution platform was made possible thanks to the global rollout of high-speed broadband services.

#Test download speed from steam Pc#

And business is booming - as of 2017, approximately 18% of PC game sales were made using Steam, representing around $4.3 billion in revenue. Steam was originally born out of the need to deliver patches to Valve’s own games in 2002, but rapidly expanded into an online store where games produced by Valve and other publishers were sold and distributed. Today we’re taking a look at how well the UK’s largest ISPs perform when users download games from Steam.Īnyone familiar with PC gaming will have come across Steam, the game distribution network operated by Valve.