Slow Download Speed Megathread

DrFeelgood4211 · June 21, 2023, 9:40pm

I live in Denmark and I have 1000 Mbit/a up and down full duplex Fiber from the best rated ISP in Denmark. My ISP’s name is Altibox. I gave them a call yesterday and asked them if they throttle anything on there Internet connection. The answer was “NO Absolutely not, as it is illegal by Dainsh law to provide less then what i pay for”.

So what you are saying is that North Americans are more important then rest of the World even though i have paid a little more for MSFS? No offence to you HalberQuacky. It just sounds like a business decision to me. Has there been any official statement from Asobo about this? What about when MSFS 2024 launches, should we outside the US should expect our PC’s to be running none stop for a week downloading this? Should i get a second PC just to play other games on while the Sim is downloading.

DaveG30 · June 22, 2023, 7:56pm

On Xbox, I’ve noticed speed issues for about the last week. Downloads start at about 5 mbps, spike at about 300 mbps for about 10 to 15 seconds, and then drop back to 5 mbps again until the same thing repeats. I’ve never had any download speed issues, especially on Xbox. In the Xbox console settings, my current connection to the Microsoft Xbox live servers is 640mbps download, 40mbps upload.

BragRaindrop933 · June 24, 2023, 6:17am

I’m seeing some strange internal FS download slowdowns right now too.

Got around to catching up with all the updates released recently. FS updates itself fine at expected speed (~30M Bits/sec) for AAU2 update, then internally in the content manager (ATR) update is sllloooow. Down to 3MBit/sec!
It then 1/2 way through the slow update speed jumps back to a normal 30 MBits/sec.
Have seen this happen a few times recently. It was fine before.

anon3270395 · June 24, 2023, 11:55am

I’m using WLAN 5 GHz plus LAN

MostMasterkir · June 27, 2023, 8:57pm

I have a problem. At the start of the Microsoft Flight Simulator download, the speed was 160 Mbps. However, when there was only 45 GB left to download, the speed dropped to 2 Mbps. Every 5-10 minutes, the speed is restored for 10 seconds to 160 Mbps, and then drops back to 2 Mbps.

BBoaBrim · June 30, 2023, 9:40am

I have noticed this over the past few weeks.

I have a 50 Mbit/s internet connection. With any other game, or other download, I generally get 50 or close to it.

But as of late whenever I download something from the marketplace it starts at 1-2 M/bits/s. After a few minutes it jumps up to my full 50. A little while later it drops back down to 1-2 Mbit/s. It continues to fluctuate like this for the entire download.

This is with a wired Ethernet connection.

If it were not for the fact that this thread exists and my normal download speeds for anything else, I would have thought it to be my internet connection.

However, seeing as this thread started in 2021, I’m not holding my breath for this to be sorted.

BegottenPoet228 · June 30, 2023, 9:48am

I usually get around 15 Mb/s download on my 500 Mb/s connection. At 4:30 am I launched the sim and the update downloaded at 100 Mb/s. Must be light server traffic that time of day.

Persojet · June 30, 2023, 7:34pm

Joining the club. Got a new update now and downloading @ 25 Mbit/s with a gigabit connection.

BitOfaB4d4zz · June 30, 2023, 8:44pm

I have to reinstall about 100GB of content! Current download speed at 1.75 mbit! Thank you, Asobo! This is going to be fun with MSFS2024!

WingWarper1 · July 1, 2023, 1:15am

This ^^^^^. I’m in the DFW area with a fiber connection on my PC with 500/500 up/down and until about a month ago I got a solid 200-300mbits/s on downloading content. Now it oscillates like a yo-yo. Luckily, the download spends more time above 100Mbits/s than at 5.

ToneyMold427 · July 1, 2023, 4:21pm

3 hours mine has been going for almost 24 hours and still at 73% on a 1GB connection

ToneyMold427 · July 1, 2023, 4:22pm

that is proof they are throttling. after the same perioud of time thats still what i’m downloading.

HalberQuacky · July 1, 2023, 5:20pm

That is not necessarily proof that MS servers are doing the throttling. Nor is it proof that they are not.

Speed tests are meaningless when it comes to diagnosing connectivity problems outside of your ISP’s network. Many times, ISPs will route speed test packets to a server very close to their external gateway, or even within their own network, so of course you will see maximum available bandwidth.

No MSFS user has a direct connection to MS servers. That is not how the internet works. All incoming and outgoing packets will pass through any number of intermediate routers getting to and from the destination. The overall speed of the connection will be no faster than the slowest of the intermediate routers. The routing used can also change dynamically as time passes.

I did a traceroute test one time while downloading a sim update. The route to the IP address of the server providing the update went through 12 intermediate “hops” belonging to three different backbone network providers.

Also, when downloading updates, the data packets use the full TCP protocol, in which receipt of each incoming packet has to be acknowledged back to the originating server. Any missing or corrupted packets have to be resent, and there is two-way communication involved. Any issues in the upstream direction from the recipient to the originating server could also cause apparent slow download speeds.

Other types of data transfers over the internet, such as streaming video or audio, use the UDP protocol, in which missing or corrupted packets are simply ignored. There is no requirement to acknowledge each and every incoming packet back to the originating server.

Certain MS servers might indeed have problems, but you cannot say “I have 1 GB internet, and I have poor speeds connecting to XXX server, so the problem must be at the XXX end”

It might be… but then again, it might not.

StatelyImp01930 · July 1, 2023, 5:51pm

I’ve experienced extremely slow download speeds as well today. I just purchased the Stratoliner and the download kept restarting on files it was in the middle of downloading. Once in a while I would be lucky and the speed would shoot above 100 Mbits/s and get me past one file to move on to the next. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my internet connection since I ran some other speed tests in the background when I experienced the slowness and my connection was fine.

WingWarper1 · July 1, 2023, 6:56pm

Pls do realize that the internet route taken for the MS download is different from the route for your speed test. As @HalberQuacky said above:

SethosV2 · July 2, 2023, 7:09am

Something is definitely going on these days. I normally never have speed problems but I just re-installed Windows last night and went to download MSFS, it has been crawling along at 2-3 Mbit/s with only an occasional run up to around 180-200ish only to drop back down again.

No amount of VPN around to various EU countries or settings fiddling seems to help

hobanagerik · July 2, 2023, 7:53am

When you stared the VPN, did you also restart the sim?

BBoaBrim · July 2, 2023, 3:23pm

Today has been better with the download speeds. However. Now my downloads come in fast but keep restarting.

Perhaps MS, or whoever maintains the server is working on these slow download speeds, and the constant auto-restarting of downloads is a symptom of that.

Spooniak · July 3, 2023, 5:04pm

Exactly the same here. Yesterday reinstalled Windows and now I am downloading MSFS with under 20mb/s although I do have a 1000mbit LAN connection. What is going on with their servers.?

hobanagerik · July 3, 2023, 5:14pm

I’ve just been doing some download speed tests, with, and without VPN.

So far, with no VPN, I have been getting various speeds downloading the same plane, the Carenado Arrow, from the “My Content” page.

You can see the IP addresses in the image name, and in the Wireshark trace just above the download speed. Sometimes stopping a download, and then starting it again will give me the same IP, but I get a sudden burst in speed. From 2-3Mpbs, all the way up to 150Mbps.

Just about to try some VPN tests, connected via Japan.

With the VPN to Japan established I don’t get terrible results:

What I did notice is the IP addresses last octet is the only one to change, to 13.107.246.46. But I see a lot of errors too, all the black lines.

Now I’ll try to the US.

Slow here, from 13.107.213.47, then suddenly burst up to 160Mbps near the end:

Tried it again, and got mid 30’s the whole way, with no sudden increase towards the end, from 104.212.67.42.

Now to try the Netherlands connection. As far as Proton is concerned, this is by far the least busy free connection.

Horrible speed that did not recover, from 13.107.213.67, which appears to be on the same network that the US connection above was on.

The more I look at this, the less sure I am that having a VPN connection running is having any effect on which content server you connect to. I killed the VPN but this time left the sim running.

When I kicked off the download I kept the same IP, but my downloads went from 2-5Mbps up to high 50’s. Perhaps I am hitting a free VPN limitation here?

Tried the same thing, leaving the sim running, but this time changing the VPN to Japan.

I got the same IP, 13.107.213.64, but this time I got nearly 200Mbps towards the end. The Japan connection is also the only connection that gives me tons of errors.

So given I am connecting to the same IP, and getting such wildly different results for these last few tests, perhaps the filtering is not going on at the content server itself, but the routers on the way to it? This may be outside of Microsoft’s hands. But for now Japan wins in the speed stakes.

Left it for a bit, with the VPN tunnel running, ran the test again, got a different IP, and now vastly different speeds again, from 104.212.68.198.

Towards the end it bursted up to ~140Mbps. Japan still comes out on top.

Finally to confirm that just by having Proton VPN installed, as well as the Wireshark Npcap capture driver installed, there are no unwanted side effects I ran an Ookla speed test with both programs closed, and this matched my baseline perfectly, with 550/52 as expected.