Poll: How much can you do when downloading?

[Dalek Caan]

So thanks to a combination of the Steam Summer sale and a 220kbs(if I'm lucky) download speed I'm probably going to spend the next 12 hours staring at the download bar, re-watching Megamind on my laptop or just listening to music. Maybe more since the download speed has tendency to bounce between 200kbs and 100kbs.

All that means I can't watch any YouTube videos, gone on to any forum where people post funny gifs and I'm not able to open multiple fan fictions. IS this your similar to your experience when downloading anything or are a god and can do whatever you want cause your internet is provided by fairies and unicorns.

This is a First world Problem as it gets.

Spoiler

 

[Elfgore]

I get about 2 MB a second. Downloading a big game or a large file will take up about 1.2. While I download that, I'll usually be watching one of Inside Gaming's streams. Which are about an hour long, while also browsing the escapist and a few other sites. Gifs tend to take a while and I can't watch anime at 1080p, I have to drop to 720p. The horror right? But other than that I see little to no lag.

 

[DefunctTheory]

That's the best I do.

When I had better internet, Steam capped at about 2.4, on average, which was far below what I could pull. Which means my current internet is throttling Steam, not the other way around.

My tears are endless. And I am actually serious about that.

EDIT: As for doing other stuff, I can do anything except watch Netflix when I'm really trying to download stuff. I usually watch Netflix anyway - haven't been too concerned with stuff I'm downloading lately.

 

[shootthebandit]

My internet is so slow. I set something to download and book a holiday for a fortnight

 

[DoPo]

That's the best I do.

Same here. Heck, even then, it's conditional - I only get a meg at night (800 KB/s during the day) and that is also only if nobody else in the house is downloading. There is four of us here. Usually, I just leave something to download overnight or during the day when everybody is away. The others do the same. Otherwise, if one person downloads something big, all four of us would feel it - which may not be too bad, normally, but at least one usually plays something online, so the high ping is irritating at least.

Unfortunately, Steam's download cap is severely crippled in functionality (dunno, might just be here, for some reason), so that is also not really an option. And there is no scheduling, but I managed to jury-rig something like a download scheduler[footnote]1. In the options untick "Allow downloads during play" 2. set something to download 3. Start a game 4. Schedule the game to be terminated at a specific time. I used Bindings of Isaac and taskkill /IM isaac.exe. 5. There you go - now something can start at a specific time. But there is no way of saying stop (I guess unless you kill Steam at a specific time)[/footnote] For GOG, I can use DownThemAll! for something that is more download schedule-y...but usually it's not really worth it - either the game is really small, so I may as well just download it now at full speed, or it is big, in which case, I'd better download it overnight or when the house is empty.

So I guess, the answer to "what I do while downloading" is pretty much "nothing" as I'm either asleep or otherwise AFK.

 

[tilmoph]

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

 

[shootthebandit]

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

was DSL the the one that sounded like a skrillex song everytime you connected. I remember the arguements "I need to use the phone, get off the internet you little shit" then you reconnect and its like beepedy beeb beeb doo wop ding ding. My god that shit was slow youd have that little folder thing that said "32 days remaining, 2mb left"

 

[Dalek Caan]

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

What service are you using that gets you 29Mbps? Did Jesus owe you a favor or something?

 

[tilmoph]

[
was DSL the the one that sounded like a skrillex song everytime you connected. I remember the arguements "I need to use the phone, get off the internet you little shit" then you reconnect and its like beepedy beeb beeb doo wop ding ding. My god that shit was slow youd have that little folder thing that said "32 days remaining, 2mb left"

No, that was dial-up. DSL was an improvement; it still used phone lines, but was faster and didn't tie up the line. But yeah, I remember dial-up; we actually had an online answering machine that would pick up calls while you were online (the most common message was my mom telling me to get off the damn internet and did I get dinner started yet.) And yes, those noises were annoying. Always thought you could use that shit as a means of torture.


Edit, since this just came up after I typed the above.

What service are you using that gets you 29Mbps? Did Jesus owe you a favor or something?

Comcast cable. I know, right? I have no idea how that works, since everything I hear says Comcast sucks. So, maybe Jesus does owe me for something.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

was DSL the the one that sounded like a skrillex song everytime you connected. I remember the arguements "I need to use the phone, get off the internet you little shit" then you reconnect and its like beepedy beeb beeb doo wop ding ding. My god that shit was slow youd have that little folder thing that said "32 days remaining, 2mb left"

...That was called dial up.

DSL is a 'high speed' internet connection that used your phone line to transmit data at a different frequency then your telephone service, allowing for the usage of both and of greater throughput. Dial up used a modem to connect to the internet by actually calling into it, in a manner of speaking. That noise was you're modem dialing in to a center that processed your internet connection.

 

[shootthebandit]

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

was DSL the the one that sounded like a skrillex song everytime you connected. I remember the arguements "I need to use the phone, get off the internet you little shit" then you reconnect and its like beepedy beeb beeb doo wop ding ding. My god that shit was slow youd have that little folder thing that said "32 days remaining, 2mb left"

...That was called dial up.

DSL is a 'high speed' internet connection that used your phone line to transmit data at a different frequency then your telephone service, allowing for the usage of both and of greater throughput. Dial up used a modem to connect to the internet by actually calling into it, in a manner of speaking. That noise was you're modem dialing in to a center that processed your internet connection.

I was looking for the noise on youtube and I found this

Whenever you think internet is a bit slow just watch this and you'll realise that you are blessed not to have archaic 90s dial up

 

[Eleuthera]

My internet got upgraded to 90Mbit/s a month or so back. Downloading from Steam averages at about 10Mb/s.

When I DL from steam websites and buffering of videos might be a tad slower, but it's never really bad enough to be a problem. (And Steam DLs stop when you start a game of course)

 

[DoPo]

When I DL from steam websites and buffering of videos might be a tad slower, but it's never really bad enough to be a problem. (And Steam DLs stop when you start a game of course)

In the client, the top menu:
Steam -> Settings -> Downloads -> tick "Allow downloads during play"

Alternatively, you can manually resume a download, if you start a game, then Alt+Tab.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler: SNIP

I have just shy of 29Mb/s download speed, so I can dowlad games without much impact on anything else I do, which is one hell of an improvement over my old DSL connect, where it was just text pages only, and it took literal DAYS for a game to download.

was DSL the the one that sounded like a skrillex song everytime you connected. I remember the arguements "I need to use the phone, get off the internet you little shit" then you reconnect and its like beepedy beeb beeb doo wop ding ding. My god that shit was slow youd have that little folder thing that said "32 days remaining, 2mb left"

...That was called dial up.

DSL is a 'high speed' internet connection that used your phone line to transmit data at a different frequency then your telephone service, allowing for the usage of both and of greater throughput. Dial up used a modem to connect to the internet by actually calling into it, in a manner of speaking. That noise was you're modem dialing in to a center that processed your internet connection.

I was looking for the noise on youtube and I found this

Whenever you think internet is a bit slow just watch this and you'll realise that you are blessed not to have archaic 90s dial up

I remember, as a kid, having to check the phone and power lines to the wall, because if they got too close together my internet would slow from 48kbps to 23kbps.

Not only did we have slow internet, but it used cabling that was susceptible to electronic noise from the computer it was hooked up to.

How did we make it this far?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I get a sustained 10-12MB/s on Steam (yes, a capital B). It usually means I can download a 10GB game in the time it takes to make a coffee and finish a forum post. If my service provider offered anything faster, I'd be on that too. Only annoying thing about Virgin Media is their propensity to keep blocking web sites, but using Tor Browser completely bypasses their filters (and lets one watch videos otherwise reserved for IP addresses in other countries).

There's no combination of downloading, video watching, surfing, etc that I or my whole family on multiple machines/tablets could do that would cause a bottleneck. In a few months, the speed is being increased at no extra cost...I think from 120 -> 150 Mbps (down, about 10-20Mbps up) with no cap.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

I'm kind of forced to use mobile broadband, since I live out in the woods, but I get up to 7mbps down (about 800kbps IRL).
I usually don't have any problems doing whatever when I'm downloading though.

The problem I have lies more with the forced soft-cap. I only get 20gb per month. Then it's 12kbps the rest of the month.
I am actually sort of glad to have this soft-cap, since they have since changed it to a hard-cap in later years.

 

[Bravo Company]

And to think that I ***** about my ISP overcharging me for shit internet of 6 mb/s while some of the people here are only getting about 2 mb/s.


Still, I have fibre to my door, why do I have to pay ~$80 a month for 6 megs of internet >.>

Anyway, I usually just turn on downloads when I leave the house or when I go to sleep as to not hamper my internets while I want to use it. Or I'll play a single player game for a bit. As for what I have the capacity to do while I download; my NIC has QoS built into it (which I usually disable because it generally causes more issues than benefits) which will throttle programs to give me uninterrupted internet capacities for whatever I want to do.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

[http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3582273575]

You can probably tell that I can generally do a lot of stuff while downloading whatever I like. I won't have access to this net for too much longer though; gotta move back to 5Mb down 0.5 Mb up in a month or so when I'm back in Mississippi.

Still, a few weeks after that I go back to uni where my net is a lot better than either of these going wired, so that's pretty sweet.

 

[Tanis]

I live in a SMALL, SMALL, town...
So, yeah, there's two net providers and they BOTH suck.

I'm SUPPOSE to get around 5MB/s, ACTUAL speed, but I'm lucky if I can break 300-500kb/s.