For anyone having internet problems with Steam open...

[Smith6612]

For those of you who installed the May 1st update and then noticed that whenever Steam was open your internet connection would crawl to a halt or felt like BitTorrent was running, here's a thread regarding the issue. I was one of the lucky ones to have been able to install the update and pre-load Team Fortress 2 onto my computer and not have to deal with this issue, as it didn't upload random bits of data at all or swamp my Linux box with connections (only downloaded data for the pre-load, uploaded data to the servers when needed when joining a game, and for game connections).

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=677491

For those not bothered to read the topic, several people on the Valve forums have noticed that whenever they fired up Steam, on any computer, their connection would be swamped with uploading data that would take connections right down, or would upload enough data to overload a router and reboot it, and ultimately prevent people from downloading games and such. Here's some fixes that were brought up:

Turning off some firewalls like Comando (?) and AVG Internet sEcurity 7.5
Setting System and Router MTU to 1500
Blocking a Steam Port (port can be found in thread)
Having a software firewall block Steam
Plugging into the modem directly
stopping the server list from updating automatically
Changing connection speed settings in Steam to the lowest settings and moving higher until the problems started.

Hope this helps for anyone having a hard time with Valve's update. Valve is aware of it and are working to help fix this problem based on this thread.

 

[Travian Wiki Network]

So, what exactly is steam?

 

[Smith6612]

Steam is a game manager program for the PC made by Valve. Steam is also a way to buy games online but with a twist; you get to download the game straight to your computer, and if for some reason you ever reformatted or went to a different computer, all you have to do is log into your Steam account and download the games again. Also, Steam has it's own IM network with voice chat included. Another thing Steam does that unlike other games where you have to hunt for game updates, it will download and install updates for any game that Valve sells in Steam automatically.

It's a nice program to use, and you can get a lot of games, from Half-Life to Call of Duty 4, to even games from Popcap Games. Nice thing is, the faster the connection you have for internet, the quicker you get your game (which means here on my DSL which downloads at 1MB/s; 1megabyte a second, I can buy a game like Call of Duty 4, have it download and install in under a half hour, unlike running to the store or waiting for it to be shipped.

That's about all that I can say about it.