My download keeps running up to a mere 32kb/s and straight back down to 0 soon after...I have nothing else running and the peak dl rate is 1.2MB

People might be bogging down the servers in your area with all the massive sales going on lately. I wouldn't worry about it unless it never goes back to normal, but you can email support for a better answer if you wanted to.

Alright thanks

I agree it is most likely due to the Steam servers having a lot of traffic.

You can try to change your DL location if you want to give that a try:

Steam>Settings>Downloads>Download Region

Steam is having serious problems.

I started a DL last night and it's fine,but if I try to start another I get the exact same problem as you.

You could check those region settings too, I know one time it randomly got set to Russia when Chicago was closest to me.

Mine was set to NY even though I live in Boston, so I switched it to Boston and it's barely moving at all. Figured there'd be more people downloading stuff in NY than Boston...guess not.

I can't even access the store on Steam's website. Too bad News, Forums and Steam server status sections are also all serviced by the same server, so they are all inaccessible too. The only thing that actually responds is the support section that does not really say anything. Or maybe it's just me..

It's probably, as noted, related to the big summer sales... http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1100320-steam-etc-deals/ I don't think we need two thread on page one about Steam.