Powerline throttling http but not steam?

Oct 30, 2018
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I've become aware that my Powerline adapters seem to throttle my broadband connection for browsers but not for Steam downloads. It started happening straight after an engineer came to see why I wasn't getting the minimum guaranteed speeds from my ISP. Once the router was showing the correct downstream speed, the Powerlines started doing this.

All the speed test sites show ~4Mb/s when run from my desktop wired in to the Powerline directly; from a laptop wired to Powerline directly; and from an iPad and Android phone and that same laptop when connected via wifi to a router I have set up as an extender via the Powerline. At the same time my desktop shows that Steam is downloading at ~4.5MB/s while connected via Powerline.

Connecting my devices to the primary router via wifi all show ~37Mb/s on the test sites (what I expect from my connection). Steam on desktop still shows ~4.5MB/s when connected via wifi to primary router.

I have updated the ethernet adapter on my desktop just incase.

What is happening here? Is Steam just lying and the Powerlines are dying? Or can Powerlines somehow throttle http but not Steam?
 
PowerLine adapters have no idea what kind of traffic they are moving, UDP, TCP, HTTP, Steam, Youtube etc - they operate on physical level. The fact that you're getting only 4mbps over them makes me think that either your house is very old, or your adapters are dying.
 
Oct 30, 2018
2
0
10


So how was Steam reporting 4.5MB/s? That's equivalent to ~36Mb/s. That's what's confusing me.