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Well, I'm in a difficult situation at the moment. I'm temporarily apart from my usual internet connection, and forced to use a really shitty solution. It's slow in ways I can't even explain: sometimes Chrome gives up at loading simple pages due to timeout errors. Going straight to the point: I've bought some titles in the current sale, and want to play some of them the sooner possible. The problem is I can't download any of them. In fact this happens with every program that implements its own downloading system - they just go corrupt or cancel in the midlle of the process.

Software specialized in downloading stuff usually do just fine for me, but Steam just won't. Is there any workaround? Perhaps some different configuration or external tool. I can login (after some insistence) just ok, but not download any game/update.

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  • Have you tried to change your modem connection speed limit in the steam settings (to something like 16 or 32 kbps) ?
    – WizLiz
    Dec 21, 2013 at 8:44
  • Did that (16 KB/s). It timed out on an update and keeps at 0 bytes/s while jumping from item to item on my download queue.
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 21, 2013 at 8:56
  • Do you have any friends, family or neighbours that will let you borrow their internet connection for a while? What about a cafe that offers wifi to customers?
    – Bryan
    Dec 21, 2013 at 10:01
  • Yeah, I guess I'll have to give a shot on that. But it's still very strange Steam isn't even trying to use the (small but existant) bandwidth available.
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 21, 2013 at 10:18

2 Answers 2

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If you have access to another computer at a location with a properly working network, then you can:

  • Log onto that computer
  • install steam
  • Download the game you want (to that other computer), using the steam client.
  • Then download the relevant files from the other location to yours using a protocol which works even in very poor connections (e.g. sFTP with resume, scp, http (move the downloaded file to a webserver), ... )

This will work if the download speed is a problem in combination with the steam client.

It will not work (or work poorly) if the problem is not the download speed, but some other reason which messes up your network (e.g. lost packets). Which is likely given that other programs such as Chrome also run into problems. In that case the proper solution would be to fix your network, which starts with identifying what goes wrong.

You did not add any OS to your question, but start with this:

  • SteamOS/Linux: ifconfig
    eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 01:27:B0:14:DA:FE
    UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
    RX packets:2746252626 errors:0 dropped:1151734 overruns:0 frame:0
    TX packets:4109502155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
    collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
    RX bytes:427998700000 (408171.3 Mb) TX bytes:3530782240047 (3367216.3 Mb)
    Interrupt:40 Memory:d8000000-d8012700
  • OS X: ifconfig (probably with EN0 rather than ETH0)
  • Windows 7: [start] [run] cmd netstat -s
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  • I'm on Win8. What should I be looking for among the stats?
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 22, 2013 at 1:32
  • I got no win8 here, but non-zero numbers in these are not good: Received Address Errors, Unknown Protocols Received, Received Packets Discarded, Reassembly Failures. There might be more efficient ways on windows, but I am more used to unices,
    – Hennes
    Dec 22, 2013 at 1:37
  • Lets see. For IPv4, I have the following: 7722 Received Packets Discarded. For IPv6: 55 Unknown Protocols Received.
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 22, 2013 at 1:44
  • Quating from technet: Discards are the packets received that contained errors or could not be processed....these types of errors should be at or near zero. If not, errors in the Sent column indicate that the local network might be overloaded or that there might be a bad physical connection between the local host and the network. High errors and discards in the Receive column indicate an overloaded local net, an overloaded local host, or a physical problem with the network.
    – Hennes
    Dec 22, 2013 at 12:45
  • So, answer accepted since you convinced me I'd better find another place to connect.
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 23, 2013 at 3:00
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If you know someone close by that has the game(s) in question, they can make a backup up of the game(s) and you can restore it to your Steam library, as Steam will just check that you own the game(s) and do the rest for you. This has always worked for me and my friends in DOTA2, where 1 person downloads the update, backs up the game an we all just restore it from the back up.

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  • If he knew someone near by I hope he would have gone there to download the game. But I might be wrong =p
    – WizLiz
    Dec 21, 2013 at 8:48
  • Already thought about both solutions. I do have a way to find a better connection somewhere else, but not today or tomorrow either. Also I'll have to come back anyway, so better sort it out for once. Sorry, no friends with Steam around.
    – radgeRayden
    Dec 21, 2013 at 8:57

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