Internet Download/Upload speeds drop significantly when launching Star Citizen
-
When launching Star Citizen, my internet speeds drop from 900+ mbps to roughly 10mbps. I have tested with multiple games, applications, and streaming services. My internet speed remains stable until this one application is launched. I have also tested if it is a local issue on my pc, but once the application is launched, all devices on my network are impacted by the reduced connection speed.
I was initially suspecting the traffic was being viewed as a DDOS, but that does not appear to be the case as I do not have any additional packages installed to monitor for this. Also, I reached out to another friend who uses the same application (but is not using pfsense) and he has zero issues with his internet speeds when launching the game.
Im at a loss here on where to even begin looking at what the cause may be.
-
I have experienced the exact same. Including when updating the game as well. I've noticed that when I run an update, for the inital 15ish minutes it will run at my regular speed, then it will drop down to 10mbps. If I pause and resume the download, then it will resume back to the normal speed. Pausing/unpausing has saved me a ton of time for large updates. Strange behavior overall. Unfortunately I am locked with my xfinity router at the moment, so I can't do much additional investigation/tweaking.
-
I realize I'm necro posting this...but seen this a couple times over the last few years and it might help somebody.
TL/DR : Oddball software claimed to help you probably doesn't.If you've got an ASUS board that is 'helping' you....try getting rid of the special software.
Reddit Post -
Add to what is said above, be aware of P2P filtering "for your own good" ?
P2P software is everywhere, even Windows update (Microsoft) uses it.From what I recall, big games have a lot to update. if this is the case, test : shut down this process, only update while not are using the star citizen app.
edit :
What happens when you start up the game, and moments before, a new map or whatever was updated. Nothing special, but a 1 Gbytes files has to be updated before you can start the game. The official game update server can't just spew out this info to the thousands of clients it has. So they build in a P2P concept : you can take a part from them, but also from others. And you can give what you have to others (the basis of P2P is very social, in theory, everybody wins). And that where a potential issue can be found : what if your UP stream gets loaded, and the UP is way smaller as the DOWN ? If the UP is full, packets negotiation comes to a halt, especially if TCP is used. So, fill up your UP, and your way bigger DOWN becomes pretty useless, even when it is not full at all.
To help you with this check if your game has settings where your can adapt what you share (the speed, bandwidth).
end edit.Also : check the software the came with your NIC : my Dell XPS came with some super nice GUI interface to "optimize" my network card (wired). A day or so later I totally removed it from my new PC, and lived happily afterwards.
Next suspect : Wifi : this one shows the most perfect bit rate will it's doing 'nothing' for you. Start put a load on it, and suddenly you've not much left (although this would not influence other non wifi uses on your network. If your fellow network user are on the same on the same AP : have a chat with your AP, or do what gamers do : use wires and be done with it.
Lat but not least : Our ISP love to sell us Megas if not Gigas. You knew it, they lied. The theoretical bandwidth is available if the moon, jupiter and earth are aligned. The sun doesn't need to be aligned, but solar flares will break the deal also.
edit : If you use Starlink or comparable, this isn't a joke anymore, its serious.
For small loads, your ISP will somewhat deliver. But big loads, they will apply their secret bandwidth limiter rule, this rule, they will never admit that they use it, of course. But they have to, as if not, to many clients would find out that they actually oversold the bandwidth. After all, if you were an ISP, and you own a 10 Gbit/sec POP to some big data center that gives you an Internet access, would you sell 10 x 1 Gbit or sell 30 x 1 Gbit with a small print somewhere that says "best effort" ?
These examples are just the "seen that, been there before" situations. Some might apply to you, some don't.
Your router, pfSense, is just a device with "2 NICs" using, most probably, 1 Gbit/sec on both sides in both directions. It's the only thing it has to do : throwing packets between these two NICs at max speed. Most often, it can do this faster as the NICs can handle it, so 1 Gbit/sec both directions on every NIC it will be.
pfSense doesn't care what ports IP's protocols you throw at it. It just copy the bits from one NIC to the other.
The admin can do "things" with with pfSense that will impact this behavior, but by default, it doesn't. Only the admin can tell you more.@berlandtm said in Internet Download/Upload speeds drop significantly when launching Star Citizen:
case as I do not have any additional packages installed to monitor for this
Status > Traffic Graph
or look at the real number, go console (or better, SSH), and use menu option 9 : pfTop
