[SOLVED] Bizarre issue: Just moved down the street, all downloads slow EXCEPT Steam?

[USS Sulaco]

Hi Guys! New member with a head scratching internet issue...

So I just moved into an older house (circa 1978) with my wife. It's literally about 5 blocks from our previous home, which was a newer apartment, in the same zip code. Literally nothing else has changed; same ISP (Spectrum), same data plan (100Mbps), same modem (Arris TM1602), same router (Apple Airport Extreme), same PC.

But there's been a pretty dramatic shift in our internet speed. For example, downloading drivers or a file would typically (at our old place w/the same service and hardware) go at about 12-15MB/s. Here, I'm lucky to get around 3 MB/s. I've tried MANY different files, servers, and server locations. Everything from downloading Nvidia drivers to utilities maxes out at around 2.5 MB/s. Different speed tests show different results:

I'm wired directly to the modem/router, not using WiFi.

Here's the weird thing, though. As slow as everything else is, STEAM games routinely download in the 13-15 MB/s, multiple times faster than EVERY other download I try. And I can't figure it out. Why on earth would everything else run so slowly, but STEAM manages at least decent results when downloading?

Any ideas? I've tried asking around at different places and I'm still puzzled why STEAM would be CONSISTENTLY fast, and yet every other download is VERY slow...

 

[Turtle Rig]

The fact that you made a physical move and router has to redetect devices etc. I think what you should try is behind the router do a reset. Also before you do that try connecting directly from modem to PC or Apple and run the speed test and see what happens.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I would call a service technician from spectrum and have them analyze the equipment and signal strength and all of that

 

[gggplaya]

You can log directly into the modem webUI and look to see if there are dropped packets or poor line signal strength on the cable.

 

[USS Sulaco]

Thanks for all the responses, guys! I'm definitely going to look into the poor line signal strength on the cable and dropped packets . I have tried two separate cables, so I don't believe it's the physical cables.
Can anyone think why STEAM would consistently be fast but almost NOTHING else? I would think poor signal strength would make everything slow, including STEAM downloads...

 

[bill001g]

Part of the strangeness is speedtest show proper results. Speedtest is actually a file transfer that is just not kept. If it was some browser limitation you would think it would be the same.

You in general can't compare steam to anything. It has great variations even in its own download speed based on the popularity of a game. Seems they replicate the more popular games to more of their data centers...not sure they hide info pretty well.

Steam is a separate program and generally it does not use http or https ports. So something that limits those would not affect steam. Steam also runs multiple parallel downloads similar to torrent so it will run faster on some types of connections....high latency in particular.

If speedtest was bad then I would suspect some browser stuff but it is not so it makes this harder.

You might want to try a download from some very large site like microsoft. Download something like a win10 image and watch the rates in the network tab of the resource monitor.

I am suspecting some software or setting in your machine. You could try a USB linux boot image. It will not be a exact comparison since any downloads will be done to the USB stick which can affect performance. You can download to the disk but you have to be extremely careful to not damage your win10 install.

One of the very common things you see lately is some setting called autotuning that microsoft has managed to mess up in some patches. It should be fixed by now but it does not hurt to see if turning it on or off makes some difference.