why doesn't SAIX host local steam content servers?

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Spartaniz

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I mean, come on, for the price of international cap and the prices of games going up, this would be great. Games on steam aren't that expensive and incredibly useful if international cap wasn’t so expensive. I'm sure Telkom would score some points from some clients by doing this???:confused:
 
Spartaniz said:
I mean, come on, for the price of international cap and the prices of games going up, this would be great. Games on steam aren't that expensive and incredibly useful if international cap wasn’t so expensive. I'm sure Telkom would score some points from some clients by doing this???:confused:
Click to expand...

You say that as if Telkom care what their clients think! :confused:

How would Telkom make money out of this, that is all they care about.
 
They used to, the problem was you cant really pick what content server you want to download from, so it was random and only luck would get you connected to the SAIX Content server... This ment that international people also downloaded from the SAIX Content server, which is a lot of bandwidth and cost a lot of money...

I do know that IS now has a local content server, you can connect with your international and when it starts downloading just disconnect it and let the local continue downloading, I think since the Saix one they changed a few things with Steam so it connects to the closest one...
 
Spartaniz said:
I mean, come on, for the price of international cap and the prices of games going up, this would be great. Games on steam aren't that expensive and incredibly useful if international cap wasn’t so expensive. I'm sure Telkom would score some points from some clients by doing this???:confused:
Click to expand...

SGS (Saix Game Services) used to host a local steam content delivery server but they pulled it, not sure why :(

I do know that IS hosts a content server now so you should be able to download it off local-only.
 
Would be great but then again I would probably also spend more money on buying games I can do without.
 
zamrg said:
SGS (Saix Game Services) used to host a local steam content delivery server but they pulled it, not sure why :(

I do know that IS hosts a content server now so you should be able to download it off local-only.
Click to expand...
What mrg said... SGS used to host content servers. They pulled out, now IS is hosting, and i'm pretty sure SAIX users are covered too (from my experience). Just go into Steam settings -> Downloads (tab) -> and choose 'Africa' from the 'Download region' tab. If that still doesn't work, I suggest you close your steam, browse to your Steam folder, delete ClientRegistry.blob, then run steam and let it update as normal - this will force it to obtain a new content server list and should use the IS one by default.

Hope this helps...

P.S. Remember, though, that on the Steam network, content servers do NOT handle authentication, ONLY content delivery - you will still need international bandwidth to 'log in' to steam and keep a valid ticket ID session going. Nothing IS-Gaming or SGS can do to help us out with that one, Steam just unfortunately doesn't cater (understandably so) for countries with such bad international bandwidth restrictions as we have here.
 
but then i can use local bandwidth to download games, not true?... just selecting location as africa and using route sentry to route it?
 
well then why THE HELL didn't i ask earlier... lol. now i can finally download the insurgency mod!!! hahaha... but the IS server is much slower....
 
There an application called SteamWatch that forces your steam to only download from whitelisted (in the app settings) content servers. If we can only get the IP of the IS content server ..
 
IS is still hosting a Steam content server (as some of you have probably already mentioned).

Here's an article on how to use SteamWatch 3 to "force" Steam to use the WebAfrica Steam content server: http://www.mygaming.co.za/news/pc/5580-How-download-from-WebAfricas-Steam-mirror.html
Just change the IP address to 196.38.180.3 (for IS: steam.isgaming.co.za), instead of using 41.185.60.43 (for WebAfrica: steam.wa.co.za).

SteamWatch 3 is very primitive, since it's actually polling the open TCP connections at a fairly slow interval and then just close the connections that aren't allowed. I've actually modified it slightly, but I can't publish it since I don't have Visual Studio pro, nor do I have the private key to sign it with :(
The best option would be to configure your firewall to allow only that IP address for TCP ports 27025-27040, although it's usually just on port 27030 & 27031.

If you're cheapskate, then you can simply go and buy a WebAfrica prepaid account for like R15, which won't expire at the end of the month. Then you can split the traffic such that all the WebAfrica FreeZone stuff (including the Steam content server) goes through the prepaid account and all the other Internet traffic to pass through your normal Internet account.
Someone recently asked how to do that in my Traffic Splitter thread (see my signature for the thread link).
 
CMON guys it's R305 for 384k unshaped uncapped including line rental with www.wazzup.co.za. Yes it's a shameless plug and no I don't work for them. I do love steam though and it doesn't seem worth it to save less than R100 per month to squeeze into a 3 gig cap.
 
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