Skinny 4G Broadband - Issues with Twitch.com & Steam

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Skinny 4G Broadband - Issues with Twitch.com & Steam

rcktppr

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#198686 19-Jul-2016 09:20

Hello there. New Geekzone member reporting in.

About a month ago, I switched to Skinny's 4G Wireless Broadband service. Generally it's been good.

Speedtest.com has indicated speeds of approximately 3-5 MB per second. I use a Mac and can monitor my current download and upload speeds via a menu bar application. During the whole Speedtest download process, the speed is consistently good.

Recently though I've noticed that when downloading a game with Steam, there will be a burst of these expected fast speeds at the start of the download, but after about 10 seconds it will drop to a consistent ~150 KB per second. Restarting Steam triggers the same pattern: a burst of download activity, then slow down. Changing the Steam download region does not help.

Twitch follows a similar pattern. 3-5 MB/s for about 10 glorious seconds, then a drop to a steady ~150 KB per second. This results in the stream being unwatchable.

Youtube on the other hand, seems to be able to stream at a consistently fast speed. Much like my Speedtest experience.

Twitch and Steam are the only things where I've encountered this issue.

Does anyone know what may be happening here?

Apologies if I have omitted any pertinent info -- this is my first post. Thank you.

techocrazy

23 posts

Geek

#1613321 17-Aug-2016 15:52

Another new Geekzone user saying hello.

I've been trying out Skinny Broadband for a couple of months, just for fun, and have seen the same issues that you are reporting. Steam downloads start at max speed (around 5.5MB/s) and then drop to about 0.5MB/s afterwards. The speed reduction seems to apply to all downloads from Steam, Origin, Uplay and GoG.

It also appears that the entire connection, at least in my case, gets throttled when downloading a game.

My guess is that Skinny and / or Spark, are simply doing traffic management to keep the other mobile users from having a slow experience.

Skinny might want to revise their "No, we currently don't put any speed restrictions on Skinny Broadband. You will receive the best possible speed we can provide at any point in time." statement. But i guess that's why they have a fair use policy.

wellygary

8312 posts

Uber Geek

#1613328 17-Aug-2016 16:16

Could twitch be shaping your stream as it thinks you are on a mobile device?.....

techocrazy

23 posts

Geek

#1613359 17-Aug-2016 16:40

That's always a possibility. I forgot to mention in my reply that Twitch has been okay for me, both on the phone and PC. Multiple Twitch streams or even two simultaneous 4K streams via YouTube work fine over Skinny Broadband. But that's just my 2 cents.

rcktppr

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1613378 17-Aug-2016 18:12

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I might have been wrong about a Twitch issue. But I'm glad to hear that someone else is having a similar issue with Steam. Well, not "glad", but you know what I mean.

edit: formatting

Yabanize

2350 posts

Uber Geek

#1613427 17-Aug-2016 19:55

techocrazy:

That's always a possibility. I forgot to mention in my reply that Twitch has been okay for me, both on the phone and PC. Multiple Twitch streams or even two simultaneous 4K streams via YouTube work fine over Skinny Broadband. But that's just my 2 cents.

Two 4k streams, gosh way to destroy your data quickly haha

techocrazy

23 posts

Geek

#1613442 17-Aug-2016 20:35

Some things have to be done, for science :)

I apologise to any mobile users in the area who had degraded service due to my "testing."