Steam download Scheduler

[Votekick]

I use a torrent program that you can schedual when it will download and seed, or when it will only seed. We need this feature as part of the Steam client for downloading game updates, or full game's when we purchase them.

They might not have it in many other countries but some countries like Australia, have download limits, for whatever reason we have a limited ammount of data usage before we get capped.

With plans that give you a bigger download limit, like mine theres peak and off-peak download times, offpeak for me being 3am-9am where I have 110gigs of download to use. Steam as is, requires me to either wait til 3am and start the download myself, or just download and use up my peak hour download which is much smaller than offpeak.

Edit:
All Australian ISPs have download limits See this site. (http://whirlpool.net.au/) Every ISP either says you have a download limit or you will get "capped" (Internet slowed down to practically Dialup speed), you either get capped or you get charged for excess usage fees, I've seen Optus (http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-3-3/optusnet-dsl-direct.htm) charging $150/GB that you go over your limit. Stupid, yes I know but thats how it is down under. It's not just here either I know somebody in Belgium who has a download limit, another person in Denmark too. Obviously the ISPs are greedy but a Scheduler on the Steam client will at least help us out.

[cryptodan]

You can now set which server you use to download content. Check the downloads tab via Settings.

[crzycnuk]

Seems like a resonable request. We don't have "peak" hour caps where I'm from, so it won't matter to me.

You can now set which server you use to download content. Check the downloads tab via Settings.

That has nothing to do with his suggestion.

[cryptodan]

That has nothing to do with his suggestion.

That has everything to do with his suggestion. If a user picks a content server in Australia that is on his ISP network they will not get charged download time, where as in the past they did for going over seas for their content.

[Frigid]

That has everything to do with his suggestion. If a user picks a content server in Australia that is on his ISP network they will not get charged download time, where as in the past they did for going over seas for their content.

That has nothing to do with his suggestion.

His suggestion is to only allow steam to download from 1PM to 5PM for example.

[Votekick]

As far as I know, there isn't a TPG server, but thanks anyway.

My suggestion is to simply add in a time slot when you'd like your content to download. I used optus as an example.

I remember when I canceled my Optus plan they offered me this "amazing" on which would have endedup costing me much more that the standard fee which was double what TPG offered.

[ShadowFighter15]

That has everything to do with his suggestion. If a user picks a content server in Australia that is on his ISP network they will not get charged download time, where as in the past they did for going over seas for their content.

That's not really how most Aussie download plans work. The plan I'm on limits me to 20GB per month, regardless of what server it's downloaded from. That bit in italics also goes for most Aussie ISPs. Australia and several other countries just don't have the infrastructure (fiber-optic cables and so on) for internet to be as cheap as it is in, say, America or Japan.

Besides which, that still didn't relate to Vote's suggestion, since he's wanting a way to tell Steam to only download updates between X am and Y am.

[cryptodan]

That's not really how most Aussie download plans work.

THats my understanding of Australian ISP Plans after speaking to a person that lives in Australia who can downloads gigs of data at any given time as long as they are from his ISP or from another ISP located in Australia. Once the connection leaves Australia that is where it starts getting capped. I have also spoken to several users on these forums who use VALVe content servers in Australia and do not get charged for using their alloted broadband.

If you are on an ISP that doesn't support such a policy then I would highly suggest that you switch ISP to either on.net or Internode which are a lot better in that regards.

[Votekick]

THats my understanding of Australian ISP Plans after speaking to a person that lives in Australia who can downloads gigs of data at any given time as long as they are from his ISP or from another ISP located in Australia. Once the connection leaves Australia that is where it starts getting capped. I have also spoken to several users on these forums who use VALVe content servers in Australia and do not get charged for using their alloted broadband.

If you are on an ISP that doesn't support such a policy then I would highly suggest that you switch ISP to either on.net or Internode which are a lot better in that regards.

The ISPs that actually have Valve content servers are 3FL, EGN, Gamespace, Telstra, GamingSA and Internode. There are way more ISPs that that.

I'm with TPG, not on that list so thats a problem, sure i could change to one of the other ISPs but the plan i have is quite well balanced. Rather cheap for 150G.

The exact same download limit with;

Telstra costs $25 more ($95)
Internode cost several times more, and those are small business download limits. 150G being the biggest limit($250)
Netspace (Gaming servers called Gamespace) you have to pay $100 for 160G (plans jump from 50 to 160)


As awesome as those plans are, I could up my download limit to 200GB instead, that'd only be $10 more. Still beating that Telstra plan by $15 and 50GB

Your seeing my problem now?

40GB peak and 110GB offpeak, the biggest thing's I download in one hit would be games, Left4Dead is almost 5GB.
A download scheduler is more than likely the way to go.

Edit:

Even if this wasnt a download limit related thing, perhaps I just wanted to download when I knew my sister or parents wouldn't be using the internet, maybe sometime between 3am and 9am.

This is what my torrent client has, I can't see any reason why this sort of feature is all that hard.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6456/scheduler.jpg

[m-p{3}]

THats my understanding of Australian ISP Plans after speaking to a person that lives in Australia who can downloads gigs of data at any given time as long as they are from his ISP or from another ISP located in Australia. Once the connection leaves Australia that is where it starts getting capped. I have also spoken to several users on these forums who use VALVe content servers in Australia and do not get charged for using their alloted broadband.

If you are on an ISP that doesn't support such a policy then I would highly suggest that you switch ISP to either on.net or Internode which are a lot better in that regards.

In Quebec ISPs uses a similar practice. We are capped monthly to a certain amount of download on whatever server we download from, whatever the time it is.

The download plans are either around 30GB for $40CDN/month or 100GB for $70CDN/month. Yes it sucks, but there is not much competition so it's either that or no Internet access at all.

[LOLFAIL]

Aye most domestic isps will have limits soon.

ALL throttle if you break "fair use"

At least in american anyway

[Votekick]

Aye most domestic isps will have limits soon.

ALL throttle if you break "fair use"

At least in american anyway

In Quebec ISPs uses a similar practice. We are capped monthly to a certain amount of download on whatever server we download from, whatever the time it is.

The download plans are either around 30GB for $40CDN/month or 100GB for $70CDN/month. Yes it sucks, but there is not much competition so it's either that or no Internet access at all.

Seems this Scheduler idea is becoming a better idea. Most ISPs in Australia have peak and offpeak, normally they try to make you bundle your phone an internet with the same people to get a discount, bundling either gets you more download or if you dont have offpeak download you get some.
My previous play with Optus was 12G download, and then an additional 24G because we had the home phone with Optus too.

[DooMDrat]

A scheduler would be so handy. I'm in the same boat. Being shaped sucks so much. 7KB/s means no TF2 playing and I can't even get games to start installing from backups on my computer!


As awesome as those plans are, I could up my download limit to 200GB instead, that'd only be $10 more.

I'm on that 200GB plan, and the offpeak time is one hour shorter than the 150GB. Bloody TPG cheapskates.

[Votekick]

A scheduler would be so handy. I'm in the same boat. Being shaped sucks so much. 7KB/s means no TF2 playing and I can't even get games to start installing from backups on my computer!



I'm on that 200GB plan, and the offpeak time is one hour shorter than the 150GB. Bloody TPG cheapskates.

So you've got 60 and 140... that's pretty good still, I tried real hard to get capped on offpeak one month, manages 80G of 110. I had enough movies and shows to last me for the next month and a bit.

But the funny thing about TPG, when you ringup and tell them your getting slow speeds, Turns out im 3Km from the exchange, I get faster download from my cousins work than from the TPG website. His work have Fibre with Optus.

[nojohnny]

THats my understanding of Australian ISP Plans after speaking to a person that lives in Australia who can downloads gigs of data at any given time as long as they are from his ISP or from another ISP located in Australia.

What you are speaking of is known as peering and is very popular in Australia.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=493483&page=11#153
This is an excellent idea. Many ISPs in Australia have peering arrangements with the same IXs(peering Internet eXchanges) PIPE, WAIX, SAIX, AUSIX, VIX, etc. The benefits of downloading from a peered source include:
* Lower latencies
* Faster speeds
* Downloads might not count towards plan usage/quota(i.e. unmetered, unlimited, free data) or may have a separate quota for data from peered sources. Some ISPs that offer free data(or a separate quota) from a peered source and have a traffic shaped plan mostly allow uncapped speeds from peered sources even if you are currently speed capped.

If you are interested you can read about peering more indepth here:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=peering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering


In addition to peering, many Australia ISPs have the concept of on-peak and off-peak quotas with the off-peak quota usually being very large in comparison. For example one Australian ISP offers on their lowest plan:
* on-peak(Downloads between 12noon-12midnight) quota of 6GB
* off-peak(Downloads between 12midnight-12noon) quota of 60GB
Once you have reached your quota, some ISPs will shape you down to dialup modem speeds(either 56k or 64k) and others will charge you extra, anywhere between $3/GB up to $150/GB.

[SparkTR]

I completely agree, Steam needs a download scheduler. I'm also with TPG and because they have no Steam content servers I've been unable to buy and download larger games, considering how easy it is to go over my peak limit. My offpeak hours are from 4AM to 9AM, and there is no possible way for me to download offpeak due to that timeslot. Steam would become my primary platform for PC games if it simply had a download scheduler.

[DooMDrat]

My offpeak hours are from 4AM to 9AM, and there is no possible way for me to download offpeak due to that timeslot. Steam would become my primary platform for PC games if it simply had a download scheduler.

You can try Shutter (http://www.den4b.com/downloads.php?project=Shutter). Besides other scheduling actions, it has an option for running programs.

Just pick "No Action" for the action, and then open the Options, go to the "On Action Extra" tab, put in the Steam executable under "Run Program" and check the box. Initiate the download in Steam and then close Steam. Set Shutter for 4AM, and click Start. Of course you should run a test first(set it to start in say, 1 or 2 minutes), as your firewall may complain about permissions, etc. Keep in mind that Shutter may freeze until Steam is exited, but this is a minor issue.

Although I use this program sometimes (that said I've now backed up all my Steam games), I still think having an internal option in Steam would be great.

[SparkTR]

You can try Shutter (http://www.den4b.com/downloads.php?project=Shutter). Besides other scheduling actions, it has an option for running programs.

Just pick "No Action" for the action, and then open the Options, go to the "On Action Extra" tab, put in the Steam executable under "Run Program" and check the box. Initiate the download in Steam and then close Steam. Set Shutter for 4AM, and click Start. Of course you should run a test first(set it to start in say, 1 or 2 minutes), as your firewall may complain about permissions, etc. Keep in mind that Shutter may freeze until Steam is exited, but this is a minor issue.

Although I use this program sometimes (that said I've now backed up all my Steam games), I still think having an internal option in Steam would be great.
Thanks! Shutter works like a charm. Has everything I need except for an option to close Steam at 9AM, but that's not a big issue. An official internal Steam scheduler would be fantastic, but this is a nice alternative.

[DooMDrat]

You can try running a second session of Shutter to shutdown at 9AM, making sure to turn off the program run option in that instance first. Again, test in case something gets stuck in the process.

[Votekick]

You can try Shutter (http://www.den4b.com/downloads.php?project=Shutter). Besides other scheduling actions, it has an option for running programs.

-snip-

Although I use this program sometimes (that said I've now backed up all my Steam games), I still think having an internal option in Steam would be great.

Thanks, that will be a viable alternative for the time being, but as you said; an inbuilt function which is standard in the steam client would be much easier, especially for those who are less skilled with the computing and uses of the interwebz.

[velsoft]

+1 want more download options

[Section821]

does anyone know if steam is scriptable with windows powershell? because if it is, then that might be an option....

[richie01]

heh.. if off peak is that big a deal to you then learn how to use Autoit.

Autoit is the f**king Sh*t for me when it comes to off peak downloading..

with just some very basic understanding of how to write a script in autoit I can schedule any kind of download.

You can schedule a steam download with a very very basic script.

I'll show you an example for anyone who looks into it.

If it's 12pm and you want it to start at 2pm (3600000 = one hour)

#RequireAdmin

;hot keys :
HotKeySet("{F5}" , "start countdown")
HotKeySet("{F8}" , "Quit")

While 1
sleep(1)
WEnd

Func start countdown()
While 1
Sleep(7200000) ; two hours
MouseMove(101,101) ; moves mouse to steam icon
MouseClick("left") ; left clicks mouse button
MouseClick("left") ; left clicks mouse button again
MouseClick("left") ; left clicks mouse button to make sure
Sleep(100000) ; Sleep for 1 minute or two untill steam opens to make sure its open
;put some more stuff down here to select library and start download then once the download is started you can tell it to sleep for 5 hours
;then it's as easy as closing steam and shuttingdown PC.
Wend
EndFunc


func quit()
Exit 0
EndFunc
Sleep(5000)
Wend
EndFunc


This is just an example. I'm making one to schedule L4D2 download tonight ill check back on the forum later.

If anyone would like a copy of my final script to schedule a steam download just let me know and ill post it here. It will be very basic but 100% effect so long as you are connected to the internet and running windows 7 or windows vista.

With 15 mins training in Autoit language you can edit my script or even make your own to use for steam or other downloads, even rapidshare downloads etc.

[Jackalesque]

I use a torrent program that you can schedual when it will download and seed, or when it will only seed. We need this feature as part of the Steam client for downloading game updates, or full game's when we purchase them.


Yeah i had the same beef, I was teetering on the edge of my throttle limit on TPG peak. (As much as i enjoy waking at 2am to unpause my downloads).

I looked for any kind of toggle for my network connection, using task scheduler VB script, but it was all very boring and the UI was incredibly unsexy.

However I found an awesome little gem called Netlimiter 3 (http://www.netlimiter.com/)

It is pimp, the GUI is awesome, it shows all programs trying to access the internet, and allows you to set rules to schedule. I dl the freebie version and it does everything that i wanted and needed. Even works for my Blizzard background downloader.

Hope this helps anyone that has a peak / offpeak internet plan. Or peeps that want to deliberately throttle their connection.

Cheers

[Shifty_Pete]

I usually use the Windows Task Scheduler to launch Steam when i want the download to start..

[djdillpickle]

Strongly agree with OP.

If a steam game is not available as local un-metered content it will count towards my bandwidth quota.

At this time, I have to wait till 1 AM, (off=peak) to start download game and then go to bed.

[-Oc-Bort]

I like the torrent idea. Don't like the scheduler or download manager idea. I personally hate those things. I'd stop using steam if they added one to every game. I think it should remain the way it is with options of where you download from (mirrors) when applicable. And I do agree and support the torrent idea it would make downloading a lot faster for some people.

But...nay to the scheduler/manager. F that!!

I did ask about how people with bandwidth limitations can get games a while ago. And what was suggested, which works, was a great idea:
Have someone else, a friend you trust, log in to your account and download it for you, then have them copy all of the game files to a flash drive or CD and get it to the person with the unfortunate bandwidth limitations. They get the CD or flash drive, paste the files where they need to go within their steam folders and vwa la! New game, no bandwidtch used on their end.

[TheMonkeyz]

What wrong could a download scheduler do? It has nothing to do with the games, it's not something that would get "added" to them. We just want a way to tell Steam when our bandwidth is free.

I'm in the woods and I'm serviced by a 5mbit WiFi link. For 63$/month, I'm limited to 50 gigs of bandwidth, but it's free from 2am to 6am.

I've bought the F.E.A.R. pack in the Halloween special but now I have 30gigs to download. Without a way to schedule my downloads I'd have to eat up 60% of my limit in a few days, I'd have to max out my connection all day and enjoy a slow internet, and I'd gobble 5mbit of the shared WiFi spectrum during peak time. I'd be a nuisance for me and my neighbors a few miles around.

But wait! Here's an easy way to start your downloads!

http://chrisnoble.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/schedule-a-steam-download/

Copy/Pasted here for posterity.

The basic solution I’ve used with success is to use the Windows Task Scheduler to run a game at a set time, which triggers the download+install or update prior to the game launching. Here’s what I did,

-Buy a game on Steam (well duh!).

-Initiate the install and start the download, but immediately switch to your downloads list and pause it.

-Go back to your library, find the game and click the play button (or use a start menu/desktop shortcut) to launch the game. We need to do this to get some housekeeping out of the way – sometimes when you first launch a game you get a “here’s your game key” dialogue that you have to click through first. If you don’t do this housekeeping step the scheduled process will hang on that dialogue box.

-Click through any dialogue boxes (copying game keys etc) being sure to tick the “don’t show this again” checkbox. This should get the game downloading again (has to happen before you can play it) but immediately pause it again.

-Start Windows Task Scheduler and create a simple task that launches the game at the start of your free off-peak period. The program you want to run is either the steam executable with the correct game id, or the game exe directly. For example, to run DiRT 3:

C:\Games\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 44320

where the “-applaunch 44320″ goes in the “arguments” box in the scheduler, or,

C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\dirt 3\dirt3.exe

where your Steam install folder may of course be different. You can find the applaunch id number from a desktop shortcut – right-click the game in your library to create a shortcut, then look at the shortcut properties to see something like:

“steam://rungameid/44320″. To find the game exe, look in the game folder inside the “steamapps\common” folder inside your Steam install folder.

-Once you’ve setup your simple task to run once at the start of the free period, you should probably test it. Either set the scheduled time for a couple of minutes away and watch it execute (then reset the time afterwards), or run the task manually. If all goes well the task will run and the download will start (pause it again!).

-Leave Steam running (even if you use the first shortcut example), check your task time, and go to bed! Now hopefully in the morning the game is installed and ready to go – or it may even be running! (but more likely you’ll see the updating dialogue that has the progress bar and “play game” button on it ready to be clicked.)

[max2]

Thanks this will work well!