Ahh yeah the provided router might not have some of the more advanced features. But suffice to say this isn’t so much a steam problem as it is a “how computer networks work” problem. The way routers work by default tends to penalize “bursty” traffic like loading websites/gaming/voice and prioritize sustained traffic like your download, so it’s nice that valve provide the option to limit the bandwidth. I’m on satellite internet right now waiting for verizon to finish their fiber install and I can’t even use that reliably because my bandwidth changes constantly D=

What kind of router do you have? If it has any kind of “smart queue” or “smart qos” you could try enabling that and it will de-prioritize steam’s packets (as needed) so that web browsing and voip still work.

Could be a variety of things but yes. It also depends on the game and how compressible it’s assets are.

Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn’t by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I’m being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.

Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.

Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn’t want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.

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Copilot.

That nvme drive just hanging out next to the power cord is giving me a type of anxiety I never knew I had, thanks.

A smallish (6U) rack mount that you can bolt into the wall. Even if they rip it down it’ll weigh a ton and have locked doors (with ventilation obvi),

OP already acknowledged in their edit that logging in with a local IP ‘fixed’ the issue.

Fuck, thanks for posting that. I’m usually happy to be wrong about something but this sucks.

That’s pretty fucked up. I’d be shootin off some angry emails to customer support. Sorry to hear that!

It means the same specific subnet. If you have multiple subnets (one for wired, one for wireless for example) it will also trigger that limitation unless you go in and manually tell it hey these are local.

lol crap, it’s the new arch!

You can absolutely run plex in a local only mode. You don’t sign it in to an account and then set your subnets in the local networks section like so. Or leave it blank if you have a standard flat home network.

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I bought a plex lifetime pass for $100 over a decade ago and I never see ads like this. I only occasionally get the notice for plex pro week and stuff like that.

You should be able to. I have a wireguard tunnel to my parent’s house and when they watch plex it doesn’t go over the relay server (I can’t port forward on starlink).

Good explanation. I’m out in the boonies with Starlink for internet right now so no port forwarding for me. I paid like $100 for a plex lifetime pass 12 years ago or something so none of my family or friends even notice most of the time. HEVC encoding helps too (you can squeeze 720p through their relay server with it).

They’ve added commercial supported live channels like many other free services but yeah, it’s lacking compared to others. Pluto.tv is my go-to if I want to throw something on at a family members house or something like that. Owned by the networks, reasonably short ads, completely free. Too bad they didn’t figure that out 10 years ago lol.