Ps4 slow download speed 2017

Without it, downloads would take hours, with it, minutes. Is it possible the latest system software 5. Can't say for sure without actually redoing the testing. Download speeds can vary for all kinds of reasons; the only way to be certain are systematic tests. But my feeling is that they haven't fixed it.

At least I had an awkwardly slow download last week, after having forgotten to close a game. But it could also have been just a coincidence. It all depends on your Internet connection. I live in the middle of nowhere and get 1Mbps.

I can just about stream SD video as long as nothing else is using the connection, and so I applaud anything Sony are doing to throttle downloads when anything else is using the Internet connection. The problem here is that the Youtube or Netflix app is on is an awful way to detect whether somebody else is using the connection. First, it has false positives due to including the cases where the app is actually active or not. If Youtube is suspended in the background, there's absolutely no way.

Second, it has a ton of false negatives due to only looking at what's happening on that PS4 system. That's an absurd assumption: in the modern world a household will have half a dozen devices using the same internet connection. The current solution does not help at all for the case where I'm trying to watch a Youtube clip on my computer while the PS4 downloads something, or someone is trying to read a webpage on their phone, etc.

Like I wrote in the post, there are proper ways of doing this by looking at the actual network traffic patterns. The "what apps are kind of running" approach chosen for the PS4 is just totally broken. I don't know if it's just me but my Playstation 4 has had absolutely terrible internet speeds.

Nothing I've done has worked, and this has been a problem since the latest firmware update. Had zero problems, downloads started immediately and were consistent until they were finished.

On the Playstation 4 the speeds fluctuate all over the place, sometimes it changes dramatically when I pause and resume. Then it slows down more and more until it becomes unbearable. Then there's the questionable sign in problem along with PSN overall being medicore in the past few months.

So how does an old, 12 year old console from the past generation give me better speeds and better consistency than a modern console that is supposed to be good? It's very frustrating. I'm this close to buying a new Slim PS4 model just to see if the download speeds and performance are any better. Could please Test the slim version?

I would like too see what has actually changed or improved on the Slim model. I am having very slow downloads speed on my PS4 that has wired connection to the router and nothing running in the background. Why have we gone from buying decent full games that download fast on ps3 to broken half a games and really slow downloading. I am going off gaming completely just because if I want to buy and download a game I have to expect to play it the next day after I originally wanted to play it and then I just go off wanting to play the game.

Was trying to download expansion packs for modern warfare was going to take 16 hours for 16GB install. Closed all my apps running I forgot to close including Modern Warfare and Netflix As an antispam measure, you need to write a super-secret password below. Today's password is "xyzzy" without the quotes. Why PS4 downloads are so slow. Posted on in Networking , Games. Background Before running any experiments, it's good to have a mental model of how the thing we're testing works, and where the problems might be.

Maybe the client doesn't support the TCP window scaling option, while the proxy does. Without window scaling, the receive window will be limited to 64kB. But since we know Sony started with a TCP stack that supports window scaling, they would have had to go out of their way to disable it. Slow downloads, for no benefit. Maybe the actual downloader application is very slow. The operating system is supposed to have a certain amount of buffer space available for each connection.

If the network is delivering data to the OS faster than the application is reading it, the buffer will start to fill up, and the OS will reduce the receive window as a form of back-pressure. But this can't be the reason; if the application is the bottleneck, it'll be a bottleneck with or without the proxy. The operating system is trying to dynamically scale the receive window to match the actual network conditions, but something is going wrong.

This would be interesting, so it's what we're hoping to find. The initial theories are in place, let's get digging. When the download was started, the game Styx: Shards of Darkness was running in the background just idling in the title screen. The download was limited by a receive window of under 7kB. This is an incredibly low value; it's basically going to cause the downloads to take times longer than they should.

And this was not a coincidence, whenever that game was running, the receive window would be that low. Having an app running e. Netflix, Spotify limited the receive window to kB, for about a 5x reduction in potential download speed. Moving apps, games, or the download window to the foreground or background didn't have any effect on the receive window.

Launching some other games Horizon: Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, Dreadnought seemed to have the same effect as running an app. Playing an online match in a networked game Dreadnought caused the receive window to be artificially limited to 7kB. Playing around in a non-networked game Horizon: Zero Dawn had a very inconsistent effect on the receive window, with the effect seemingly depending on the intensity of gameplay. This looks like a genuine resource restriction download process getting variable amounts of CPU , rather than an artificial limit.

I ran a speedtest at a time when downloads were limited to 7kB receive window. It got a decent receive window of over kB; the conclusion is that the artificial receive window limit appears to only apply to PSN downloads. Putting the PS4 into rest mode had no effect. Built-in features of the PS4 UI, like the web browser, do not count as apps. When a game was started causing the previously running game to be stopped automatically , the receive window could increase to kB for a very brief period of time.

Basically it appears that the receive window gets unclamped when the old game stops, and then clamped again a few seconds later when the new game actually starts up. Conclusions If any applications are running, the PS4 appears to change the settings for PSN store downloads, artificially restricting their speed. There are a few important details: Just leaving the other applications running in the background will not help.

The exact same limit is applied whether the download progress bar is in the foreground or not. Putting the PS4 into rest mode might or might not help, depending on your system settings.

The artificial limit applies only to the PSN store downloads. It does not affect e. This is why the speedtest might report much higher speeds than the actual downloads, even though both are delivered from the same CDN servers. Not all applications are equal; most of them will cause the connections to slow down by up to a factor of 5. Some games will cause a difference of about a factor of Some games will start off with the factor of 5, and then migrate to the factor of once you leave the start menu and start playing.

The above limits are artificial. In addition to that, actively playing a game can cause game downloads to slow down. This appears to be due to a genuine lack of CPU resources with the game understandably having top priority. Speculation Those were the facts as I see them. Q: Is this an intentional feature? If so, what its purpose? Q: Is this feature implemented well? Oh dear God, no.

It's hard to believe just how sloppy this implementation is. Q: How can this still be a problem, 4 years after launch? Footnotes [ 1 ] How idle?

Next » Numbers and tagged pointers in early Lisp implementations. Previous « The mystery of the hanging S3 downloads. Thank you for investigating this issue.

I was wondering about this for years now. Just thought it would be interesting. I don't think that's going to work : Large companies don't really have mechanisms in place for feedback like this.

The actual graphing was done with R, using the ggplot2 library. Any chance you want to assess the PlayStation Store website store. It's even worse and makes Nintendo's backend look cutting edge! Max, Right. Brett, Hollywood, What kind of speeds are you seeing on wired vs.

Thanks for this write-up; some very interesting details For the most part, I like how the comments here aren't of the fanboy nature; try to IMPROVE the situation is much better than troll banter. Kenneth, It appears that the ARM coprocessor is not actually used for downloads, even though it was the original plan.

Jack, This was on an non-slim PS4. The Pro might help for that. The other things discussed were purely related to system software. Bart, It'll be easy to verify by taking a packet capture. Ernst, This was covered in an earlier comment. I've used a local proxy since the launch of the PS4 and I have a mbit fibre connection.

AngryAtom, Sure, it could be that this is what they were going for. Best Apple Watch. Best iPad Cases. Best Portable Monitors. Best Gaming Keyboards. Best Drones. Best 4K TVs. Best iPhone 13 Cases. Best Tech Gifts for Kids Aged Awesome PC Accessories. Best Linux Laptops. Best Bluetooth Trackers. Best eReaders. Best Gaming Monitors. Best Android Phones. Browse All News Articles. Xbox Series X Bundle. Windows Zero Day. Xbox Virtual Museum.

Windows 11 Emoji. GoDaddy Breach. TikTok Samsung TV. Spotify Shuffle Play Button. Windows 11 Performance. Find Downloaded Files on an iPhone.

Use Your iPhone as a Webcam. Hide Private Photos on iPhone. Take Screenshot by Tapping Back of iPhone. Should You Upgrade to Windows 11? Browse All Windows Articles. OneDrive Windows 7 and 8. It makes no guarantees that it has the answers, but at least you'll come away from it knowing that you aren't crazy: PS4 download times do suck. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Gaming PlayStation Xbox Nintendo. Movies TV Comics. Star Wars Marvel. Why are PlayStation 4 download speeds terrible? Here are some ideas. New, 76 comments. By Owen S. Good Aug 20, , am EDT. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email.

Next Up In News. Loading comments The Latest.