Slow download speed (reinstalling MSFS after upgrading to Windows 11) … My internet speed is 350 Mbits/s, but MSFS is downloading at 3 Mbits/s… Anyone else with this same problem?
Are you using a wireless or cabled connection?
As well, some folks have tried a free VPN in these situations which has worked quite well.
Quite often ISP’s will throttle large downloads.
There are quite a few posts here on that.
They shouldn’t do if it’s a fibre connexion. However I acknowledge in the past it used to be the case especially if:
a) a rush hour contention ratio was invoked
b) the ISP suspected a torrent stream (they used to inspect the data packet)
I had a similar problem, it was the windows and the Intel net card on the machine. The solution was to download the intel drivers for the net card instead of using the Windows ones.
to correct:
find out make model of your network adapter…
do a search for the network adapter
if you find threads about slow speeds check a few threads about a solution
If its the net card issue just download the appropriate driver and install it
Now if you cant find any of the above information about your card, download a program called ping plotter, and run it against one of the clients in the list. Look at the right for latency and packet loss, if that looks clean, start a large download (preferably have the sim do this) and see what happens in ping plotter, again if your getting packet loss or latency then its a problem with your provider.
Most ISP guarantee speeds upto XXXMBPS it doesnt mean you actually going to get it.
I have a 1.2 Gbps fiber connection and the last time I did a full reinstall it took about 3.5 hours. The initial Steam setup was fast. Then it came to a crawl.
The world updates were much faster.
This is exactly right there is a very reason if you read your ISP’s agreement it is “UP TO X Mbps” That is the Maximum you are going to get to your local Node. Additionally most large download servers have a cap on the server side that sets the maximum speed it will feed data to single client. This could be a hard cap, or can be dynamic based on the number of current users.
Fiber has not really changed how we handle data in the ISP core. Any residential fiber connection is still going to be a “shared” service, meaning that the Node you connect to has a single uplink to the ISP’s core, that is a fraction of the total bandwidth sold to customers off that Node. Many fiber to the home providers still throttle traffic during peak times and have data caps. We have been using Fiber to The Node far longer than fiber to the prem has been available.
Data packets are still inspected, the ISP I work at I can log into our residential gateway firewall pull up the IP of any given customer and see that x% of the data they are using is Netflix, or Bit Torrrent etc. I want to note here that we can see that data we really only use it for troubleshooting and it is only stored for a short time, in the actual firewall there is no customer information attached to it, just that IP X.X.X.X is using this currently and in the past 7 days has used this.
I know in the ISP industry we love to push how fast fiber is compared to xyz tech, but the reality is that 100Mbps fiber connection has the exact same download speed potential as a 100Mbs cable connection. It is not the magic bullet that it is sold to people as. You will likely get a higher upload speed and maybe slightly better latency, but your download speed will be the same.
Problem solved… Here is how:
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Allowed downloads from other PCs… (delivery optimization on the “settings”)…
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I installed a VPN… download increased from 3 Mbits/s to 230 Mbits/s…
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Don’t disable the autotuning (netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable). This will limit your bandwidth. Set it to normal (netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal)
Thank you all for your help!!!
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I wonder which step did the trick.
The key was the VPN.
What region did you change from and to?
So the issue is that your ISP is screwing you … NICE … hope you call and make a stink…
Interesting. I might try that.
If anything the VPN working would indicate that the issue is not in the local ISP’s network since even with the VPN the traffic must still traverse the ISP’s network, since A VPN cannot magically bypass the ISP.
Once out of the ISP network the traffic would go the VPN server thus changing the route through the tier II/tier 1 backbone networks between the ISP and the MS datacenter.
I have worked in the ISP side of the business for over a decade every customer nearly every complaint about something like this I have seen as come down to one of 3 things.
- An internal issue with the customers home network
- A line or equipment issue between the providers home and local NODE
- An issue with a Tier II provider (congested link or similar)
I would still call and open a ticket with the ISP, they can investigate and confirm if there is an issue, and open a ticket with their upstream provider if appropriate.
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Bear in mind I know nothing of how these things work.
Based on your post, you would think Item 1 and 2 would not be the cause.
Would he not be using the same home network, and the same line-equipment between home and local node, even when using a VPN?
That leaves item 3, which does seem to me to be an ISP issue.
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I can easily see from the end user perspective how it could all appear to be the same thing.
Depending on your ISP there could be multiple other providers between you and the data center.
Just as an example the ISP I currently work for provides Tier II peering to some small rural ISP’s, so their customers traffic comes to us and then onto our Tier II providers network before it hits the Tier 1 and ultimately the big datacenters. Once the data leaves our network and goes to the tier II provider we have no control over it, therefore it would not be our issue. Even this is a simplification we could add in the underlying fiber providers and if it is dark fiber or lit fiber that neither the ISP nor the tier II provider controls. It take s a lot of moving pieces to get data from the data center to your PC and in most cases only a small piece of it is under your ISP’s control.
I will never say it is impossible that it is in the ISP, there certainly could be something going on but, cases where a VPN fixes the issue really points to either an issue on the users PC such as a config issue that VPN ignores, or an issue upstream of the ISP.
Either way the user should call and open a ticket with their ISP. Since the ISP is the tier II providers customer they are the ones who would have to open a ticket with them to resolve any potential issues. Just be aware that if the ISP tells you it is outside of their network, that very likely is the case, you should ask if they have escalated the issue to their upstream provider.
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Thank you, an awful lot of this is all so new to me! 
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