First of all, welcome to the forum! A vpn may not work for everyone but I think you might be interested in this thread:
Especially, this post:
I think this is a somewhat complex issue with lots of variables between you and the MS servers. To just bash MS because of their servers is probably just overreacting. Also, there are lots of people like myself who have not had any issues with the MS servers. Happy flying!
This is a problem that has been brought up by players for 2 years with no resolution from Asobo or Microsoft.
I started a download of the game on a new PC, purpose-built for Flight Sim, nearly 6 hours ago and Iâm at 71%, utilizing around ~15% of my download bandwidth. This doesnât happen with Steam games. This doesnât happen with any other Microsoft game.
The download process of this game is fundamentally broken. âSign up for a sketchy free VPN, and maybe that will help?â Thatâs the solution that Asobo and MSFT are leaving us with? Nonsense.
Hi, just want to add my story here, as i had this very issue just yesterday, after i bought msfs (steam).
I live in Vienna, have a 110MBit connection and never ever had any issues of slow downloading.
So i did the purchase in steam and then steam downloaded the initial MSFS installer (about 1,7GB), with full speed of course.
After starting MSFS, creating the acocunt it told me what was needed to dl and so i sait yes, start it.
About the first 10mins went well, nearly full speed, but then it started to get choppy. It was no constant stream anymore and more and more pauses interrupted the downstream (my connection was not loaded by any other thing).
This was getting worse and worse and ended in 5secs pause, then 2 secs with 5MBit (!) and 5secs pause again and so onâŠ
I googled and found threads about this among this one.
I tried most of the stuff mentioned in these threads but to no avail.
Then, today i tried one more thing out of desperation:
One here mentioned to try to set the ânetsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normalâ to disabled and then to normal again, this didnât help either in my case. But I looked at the option this setting has and found that there is also a setting named experimental and I tried this.
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=experimental
(with ânetsh int tcp set globalâ one can see the available otions).
I still canât believe it to some degree but this actually seemed to have cured my issue. With this setting Iâm currently downloading since 40 minutes an have constant, choppyfree 110 MBitâŠ
I donât exactly know what this setting does in general, but it somehow must be related on how a windows app handles traffic. Again, I never ever had slow download in steam or any other source from where i downloaded stuff (e.g. xplane).
So, if all of the above doesnât work for you, you can add this to the try list, its worth a shot.
My feeling is with all the âsolutionsâ posted here itâs just a coincidence that the speed goes up.
I, too, tried everything here posted to get the speed up from 2 to 3 MBit (you read that right) with a 1 GBit line.
Sometimes I applied a solution and I i saw the speed going up and I thought âyep, that was it, now itâs back on courseâ but then it dropped again after a minute or so.
This was the case with every solution (also VPN, DNS server, netsh int tcp stuff) etc.
Then I just let it all at default and there it also suddenly went up to sometimes 300MBit, sometimes 40 MBit with me doing nothing. So I think itâs all just coincidence and depends on the mood of the MS servers.
I often noticed the jump in speed when a new package started downloading (iâm talking about the major updates you have to do to even be able to start and play the game) âŠfspackage.020âŠ
I have MSFS installed on my PC on both, Win 11 and Win 10. I set up a dual-boot on my PC because my VR-Headset (HP Reverb G2) just wonât work with Win 11 (it always shows âdriver errorâ, have the same issue with my Bluetooth mouse) and this problem canât be fixed or letâs say I tried everything I found on the net and gave up after 1 week and just installed Win 10 parallel where I now have all my VR games.
So my Win 10 MSFS and Win 11 MSFS both suffer from the speed problem so itâs nothing Windows version specific and I can only assume the problem is the MS servers or the code in the game.
The first two of the three applied updates (80Gb of the 120GB in total) went fine and fast with 400MBit/s and up but the last 40GB just went so slow, starting at 2MBit/s going somtimes to 300MBit/s, going down to 3 going up to 40 going down again⊠[ ⊠] âŠgoing up and finally balanced at 30MBit/s.
Itâs just lottery.
I get what you are saying and I agree with you for the most part with all the little tweaks and suggestions postedâŠexcept the VPN one. Using a VPN I consistently get 70-80 Mbps. Without it, I get anywhere from 4-14 Mbps.
What is really frustrating is that on my Desktop PC it works fine, but on my brand new laptop it HAS to have a VPN. I kept thinking it was an internal setting or something and was trying to match everything but nothing worked. If anyone is having issues, I highly recommend trying a VPN. Make sure you close the game, start the VPN, then reopen the game to start the download.
Good Luck
This seems totally counter-intuitive to me. It just canât be. Something else must be at play, here.
Edit/Update:
Please disregard my comments above, cough-cough. I just ran a bandwidth test. âMindlessJunkieâ appears to be correct.
Results below:
VPN off:
VPN on:
Bear in mind that that is a synthetic test, and has no direct bearing on MSFS performance. All youâve done is have a VPN tunnel established, and gotten a different result from what looks like Ookla. Your images donât show which test site you were connected to, so that is up to interpretation also.
That said, I have used Proton in the past, back when MSFS were having serious server issues on SU launch day. I over doubled my download performance by having my VPN pop out in another country, but even then it was just under half of my actual bandwidth.
I agree.
However, based on my past experience with VPNâs in the military, I expected a distinct loss of BW in VPN mode. This definitely shows the opposite.
A better test for me perhaps would be to download and install one of the World Updates under the same conditions?
Yes, VPN on/off, and perform a larger data transfer from the sim itself.
I know its not related specifically to this thread, but the other issues of download speeds of scenery data i.e. Bing, probably comes from a completely different set of content servers. 
But in theory at least if you are pop out in a completely different geographic location you would be downloading from a different set of servers there too.
Just finished another test, which kind of worries me. I think I get as much pleasure from trouble-shooting this animal as I do actually flying in it!
Anyway, the results from THIS test kind of bear out what I originally thought!
Downloading a large update within the sim. is definitely slower on my system with VPN (Surfshark) turned on.
For the record, my MSFS shows connection to the Eastern USA server with around a 6-7ms ping.
I have a gigabit ISP service, which is reduced significantly by the PCâs wi-fi connection to my router.
But Iâm ok with that as the router is a good distance away and too far away to string ethernet cables to.
500-600MB is my typical operational range - quite good, I think.
Try using some powerline adapters they use the electrical mains cabling in your house, they are fairly cheap to buy now and very easy to use. Much better than wi-fi in most cases. I get about 90% of my bandwidth available using these.
Thanks for the suggestion. Tried them once about 5 years ago. Didnât help much then, but it was a different house and perhaps older technology, too. I think Iâll revisit this one.
I have been seeing a curious behavior with downloads through the Marketplace and the Content Manager for several days, regardless of whether it is a third-party add-on or official content from the simulator, such as a World Update, for example.
When the addon installation begins, the download starts at a high speed, but little by little it starts to slow down until it stabilizes around 2.50 Mbits/s. Suddenly, when the packet is finishing downloading, it speeds up again to 150 Mbits/s. When it starts downloading a new package, this behavior is repeated. Itâs quite strange.
My connection is 600Mb and they work perfectly, both through tests or by downloading other addons through other platforms such as ORBX, Contrail, SimMarket or games from other platforms, such as Steam, for example, with high transfer rates. It only happens by downloading from the simulator itself, so I suspect there is a problem with Microsoftâs servers.
Just an update.
I checked our house wiring and found that the router location is on a completely different electrical circuit than my computerâs location. So⊠out of luck, as they say.
Ah, that does stop the powerline solution being of any use to you.
Oh well, just an idea, might help other people reading this thread though.
Has there ever been an confirmation from Asobo on this problem?
It has been a problem for me ever since release of MSFS2020, but recently i has gotten much worse for me. Right now MSFS 2020 is downloading the new City Update. Itâs starting at 0.xx Mbit/s then climbs up to 2.5 Mbit/s over are couple of minutes. Then the download stays at 2.5 Mbit/s for 10 minutes, and then shoots up to between 120 and 260 Mbit/s in matter of seconds, then back down to 2.5 Mbit/s. in 25 minuets it has only downloaded 1 GB of 3,25 GB⊠Iâm sick and tired of this problem for so long. In the Windows Updates settings i says âMicrosoft is commited to reduce carbon emissionsâ, by letting my computer run for over 48 hours straight at 350 Watts⊠I can see how that reduces carbon emissions⊠What a load of horse â â â â !!!
The only conclusion I can come to is, that this is not a fault on any users end. Because the download issue is totally random. I have done some digging. The download transfer is going over the HTTPS protocol via AWS (Amazon Cloud Services) but why Amazon? The only reason i can think of to use AWS instead of Azure Microsoft own cloud eludes me!!!
It depends on where you live, your ISP, and the route your packets take to and from the download servers. MS may subcontract with Amazon AWS specifically for updates because their content delivery network is optimized for pushing very large file packages.
I live in the US northeast, using Spectrum Cable, and I have never had low bandwidth or wildly varying download speeds for any content delivery for MSFS. Not for the initial installation in 2020, nor any of the multiple sim and world updates since then. It always comes down at a steady 100 on 150 MBs on my 200 MBs connection.
I download over wired Ethernet, and use an extremely robust (and very expensive) Netgear AXE11000 router, which is optimized to support multiple high-speed streams.
Feel sorry for anyone wanting to do a full reinstall. This will take weeks at this rate.
On xbox the download speeds are awful and not just on this sim. It does seem a Microsoft thing throughout
Same here! Download speed at about 2.5 mbit! No other services, devices or games are affected! MSFS only!
