Flakey connectivity to steam /valve

[#1]

As above and it seems to becoming more frequent, the steam client sometimes will not connect even though the steam servers are up, also i run a dedicated server for insurgency  this to will randomly drop the connection to steam  it connects /pings this IP 81.171.115.35 , Is this a valve issue or a peering link issue ?

[#2]

Hi Deathtrap,
It's been a few months since I played anything on Steam but I do remember having some issues with it a few months prior to that. It didn't seem to affect everyone that we were playing with but I would see Steam drop its connection completely, I'd be dropped out of chat/voice and show as offline however I was still able to play the multiplayer game I was in seamlessly!
Turned out to be Steam and resolved itself after a few random events over a month. Since then I have noticed I can't connect to Steam when I first fire it up and I have to close it down and fire it back up before I gain connection.
To me it sounds like you're seeing the same thing, Steam drops but you still have an active connection. For me it was just occasional enough to not bother me too much and since then it seems to have cleared up.

[#3]

Same here Adam, maybe 1 in 3 times I start Steam, it says I can't connect, then I shut it down and then when I start Steam again, it connects me. I used to use Steam chat, when playing BF4 with my mate, but I got fed up of talking to myself because Steam had disconnected. I vowed never to use Steam again when I first started playing CSS, but I thought after 10 years it would have improved, I guess it has but it is still a flaky bit of software.

[#4]

Hey PitchBlack,
I totally know what you mean, we ended up going round the houses to get voice chat via another method but by the time we had narrowed it down to having one of us run a server at home, the Steam service had decided to pull it's socks up! 

[#5]

The voice chat I have settled on for the moment Adam is Dolby Axon, its free and seems to do the trick, from what I have read it is also good for games like WOW as you can use things like throw the microphone, so if someone is talking in another room, you can throw the mic near to them and eavesdrop. As a normal voice chat it is spot on too, you can move people around in your chat room, so everyone is talking from a different position..
Here's a review : http://dolby-axon.en.lo4d.com/

Website : https://axon.dolby.com/home.php?user_id=552000

[#6]

Steam has been pretty unreliable for a number of us who play games together just recently.
If you're signed up to the Beta version, it might be worth going back to the stable version to see if that helps.

[#7]

Not using beta version,never have, and it's not only the steam client that sometimes drops connection or won't connect sometimes, i run a dedicated server  that also connect to the steam/valve VAC servers  currently the steam powered IP  i connect to is 2.20.152.41 which is an Akamai IP in the uk , the base ping is 14ms , but this does show peak time congestion latency increases and 1% packet loss  some evenings or has in the recent past ,

[#8]

Actually I've noticed something similar recently, can't tell if its Steam or PN. I have however noted that if you cancel/pause a steam download and then right click your icon to select on-line when it puts you off-line, it does seem to fix the issue. It may be caused by Broadband capping out me thinks? Reconnecting afterwords also maintains connection, though it does re-disconnect for me, repeat fix til it finishes the DL.
I'd guess that other Broadband heavy activities such as videos & Streaming will have a similar, if not identical effect.

[#9]

Hey KhromeHound
Is this particular problem when you are downloading a game or update and you see your progress bar for the download drop off completely, then receive a disk busy message?

[#10]

Some of the issues are defo down to steam itself, Dota2 messed up for weeks and said it was trying to download but it just sat there doing nothing.
The dota2 problem was not plusnet as my mate on virgin had the same issue and also a friend in india, Since steam updated the client dota2 is at least fixed.
Personly speaking i have minimum problems with steam to be honest but thats my end so can't comment on other peoples issues.
I don't use other programs to chat with people though so i don't know if this issue is PN or not.