this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Steam Deck

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[Help] Connection issues when downloading content (feddit.de)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Localhorst86@feddit.de to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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Hello everyone,

I have posted this question already ten days ago, but apparently federation was broken so it didn't actually reach your lemmy instance, so I am posting it again, apologies if it appears twice:

recently I noticed that my steam deck has serious connection issues, but only when downloading content (games, updates shader caches etc.)

The steam deck will download at full blast for a few seconds, then drop slowly to 0kb/s, eventually stopping with the error “content server unavailable” or “no internet connection”.

The status bar will either show a steam logo with an exclamation mark indicating it can’t reach steam, or an exclamation mark on the wifi signal indicating it can’t reach the internet at all.

When I put the steam deck into sleep mode and wake it up again, it will download a few hundred megabytes at full blast, only to stall to 0kb/s a short time later. Very rarely will it manage to download a few gigabytes at a time.

Downloading larger titles therefore requires me to regularly put the steam deck to sleep and waking it up again.

The deck never seems to lose connection when I am just gaming, only when downloading content off the CDN.

I am using a pihole, but I can not see any blocked traffic from the steam deck in the query log, in fact, all DNS requests made by the steamdeck get forwarded to and replied from the upstream DNS servers. I tried openDNS as well as Google servers, both with the same results.

I even tried disabling the pihole altogether, with the same result.

I tried disabling wifi energy management in the steam deck developer settings, but that also did not increase stability.

The Router I am using is a TP-Link Archer c7 v5 running DD-WRT (I updated to a very recent build to see if it increases stabilty, unfortunately it did not), the steam deck connects to the AP using 5Ghz wifi, I tried a few different channels but it still is very unstable.

Does anyone have any idea how I could solve this? Has anyone had a similar issue and was able to solve it?

UPDATE: For a follow up post with a fix to my issue, follow this link: https://feddit.de/post/8299615

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[–] flx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My next idea would be to try connecting to the internet using a usb c ethernet adapter of some kind. Is this only the steam deck, or are other steam clients on the same network affected too?

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.de 1 points 8 months ago

That's a good idea, didn't occur to me. I should have a few adapters lying around somewhere, I will give this a shot.

Other steam clients (my PC) are not affected by this, but it's connected to the router via ethernet.

[–] blargbluuk@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've also been having weird issues with the steam deck downloading for some reason and couldn't figure it out. I use the dock so it's using a wired connection (but the same thing happens on WiFi) and I have gigabit Internet, will get maybe 150mbps for a moment, then drops down to max 15mbps or slower but doesn't outright stop like yours.

If you do a speed test in desktop mode via a browser what speeds do you get? I'm all but positive this is something specific to steams cdns. I also use a pihole but bypassed it for testing and it made no difference. What's your download region set to in the steam settings? I'm on the east coast and tried a couple different nearby locations with no effect.

[–] flx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are you downloading to an sd card? If so, that's the issue, steam downloads to ram and then has to wait for the sd card to write the already downloaded data.

[–] blargbluuk@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

I did stumble on that issue, but no I have a 1tb SSD installed with tons of free space on it and it's performance seems totally fine - I can transfer a game from my PC to the deck at 500+mbps. I've just kinda given up and been using my pc to download larger stuff first and transferring it as a workaround for now.

[–] minja@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Is the storage full from your device?

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.de 1 points 8 months ago

Storage is not full, it's a 256Gb Steamdeck with a 512Gb SD card. The internal storage has about 15Gb of free space, the SD card about 30Gb

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Most download speed issues just from people downloading onto an SD card, but yours losing connection to steam servers is very weird. Can you try downloading on someone else's wifi, or try downloading on a 2.4 Ghz network instead?

You should also try downloading in desktop mode, and if the steam Internet connection drops out, try then using a web browser for speed test/etc and see if things work.

It sounds to me like it might be a faulty wifi card, and it's stopping working after heavy use. That's just speculation though, and some of the tests I mentioned above will help eliminate other possibilities.

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Downloading via a 2.4GHz wifi set up on the same dd-wrt router seems to be more stable, but also a lot slower.

When downloading via desktop mode, when the connection drops out, I can not access any website using the browser. It seems as if there is an issue with the wifi driver when using 5GHz wifi.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I would guess the card is overheating or something similar. Shutdown if it gets overloaded (by downloading too much too quickly), and needs to be reset before it will work again. Probably will need to RMA to fix it