How come whenever I download something like on steam, my download is not at full speed but “ramps” up to max?
In: Technology
The server sending you a download has no idea, to begin with, how fast it can send data to you. Imagine it like a set of roads to get from your house to work. Some roads are small and narrow, some are wide. Some roads might be congested and some might not. It just doesn’t know which roads will be used or how congested they are before it starts sending.
So it sends you a small bit of data to start with. If the data gets through with no congestion reported the sending server tries to send more data at a time. It keeps doing this until it gets reports of congestion and then it slows down.
And the whole time it is sending your data it keeps testing as to see if it can go faster or not and it simply slows down when there is congestion.
In this way it ramps up to the best possible speed and then adjusts as it goes.
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