Vodafone steam cache

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Cbfd

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#127271 5-Aug-2013 07:53

Seems like vodafone/tcl have a new steam cache up ans working that uses steams new delivery technique - also seems to have alot of the steam library too and unmetered as well

Lias

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#871821 5-Aug-2013 08:48

O rly?

I downloaded ~20gb from steam in the last few days on TCL cable and it was metered.

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Cbfd

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#871824 5-Aug-2013 08:53

Its there bt you dont always connect to it

Inphinity

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#871825 5-Aug-2013 08:55

Haven't TelstraClear had a steam cache for ages? It's been in the steam source list for yonks.

itxtme

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#871828 5-Aug-2013 09:05

I got up to 8 MB/s - yes MB/s yesterday on there, 5 gigs took 15 minutes, yay for Supernet :P

Ragnor

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#872238 5-Aug-2013 18:45

Cbfd: Seems like vodafone/tcl have a new steam cache up ans working that uses steams new delivery technique - also seems to have alot of the steam library too and unmetered as well

SteamPipe just uses standard HTTP, so any transparent caching proxy system can cache it
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamPipe

Lias

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#872347 5-Aug-2013 20:33

The author of Steam Limiter has posted over at ON3 about this, and has updated his tool to work with this new improved but as yet unannounced cache.

http://www.on3network.co.nz/showthread.php?76566-Steam-Download-Tools&p=1529557#post1529557

His tool can be found at https://code.google.com/p/steam-limiter/

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Cbfd

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#872393 5-Aug-2013 21:34

Quick note that thia isnt offical as yet - and customers on vodafone side use this it will still be added to there cap - only unlimited for telstraclear for now

nbree

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#872446 6-Aug-2013 00:10

Ragnor:
SteamPipe just uses standard HTTP, so any transparent caching proxy system can cache it

Interestingly, since I discovered the change to the old TelstraClear server over the weekend while I was working on the new version of steam-limiter I've noticed it really deliver some shocking performance - ~20kb/s for long periods - on some rarer games, so it may well be that in fact it's nothing more than a proxy. Not that it matters much what is behind the DNS name, as long as it's unmetered and you can prevent Steam from including other servers as well, and for most common stuff it performs well enough (typically with steam-limiter running you'll be downloading 3 streams in parallel from that one server and despite being on a really crusty piece of rural DSL it's about the same throughput as I was getting a couple weeks ago through the HighWinds CDN).

One interesting thing that's happened at the same time that Valve started advertising steam.cdn.vodafone.co.nz was they also started advertising some new server DNS names like "content7a.steampowered.com" that are run by Akamai, which is a new development compared to the HighWinds and other CDN hosts that they were using for content1.steampowered.com and content3.steampowered.com in our geo until recently.

Since Telstra in AU just also offered a new Steam service a few weeks ago too (just around the time Akamai servers started appearing in traces sent to me by folks on Whirlpool), it seems extremely likely that it's Akamai doing all the heavy behind-the-scenes lifting at supplying the ISP-level caches now. Given that, it's unlikely that Valve need to do much except advertise these new proxies as they come on line, and you have to wonder whether the incredible delay in getting one of these things deployed in New Zealand (other ISPs around the world had unmetered HTTP Steam servers over 18 months ago!) may have been largely due to Valve putting in a new process with Akamai to make this easy for ISPs to slap them up.

Hopefully when this is made unmetered for customers routing from the other Vodafone ASNs someone actually bothers to give me a heads-up about it so I can enable the configuration rules for those ASNs.