Taking back your bandwidth from Microsoft . . .

britechguy

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I take no credit for the following. It was written by Jaffar Sidek on the Windows 10 for Screen Reader Users Group on Groups.io earlier today. This is something I was entirely unaware of, and I instantly enabled this group policy item and set the percentage down to 15. I want my user stuff to get favored for bandwidth when I need it, not Windows 10. When I'm doing nothing, have at all the bandwidth, but not when I'm downloading something I want, generally as quickly as possible.

The instructions are written with screen reader users in mind, but conversion to sighted "point and click" is a trivial exercise:

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Ever wondered why your large file download is not as fast as it should be even though you're on a fast connection? Ever wondered why there are times when you are unable to achieve certain tasks on your pc? It is because from time, Microsoft gets ahead of your network activity queue and reserves or steals your band width to check if, for example, your copy of windows is genuine, or to perform what it sees as a priority, update to your system. They are in possession of what is known as a "Fast pass" which literally means like those with the more expensive tickets will be in front of you in line and priority, no matter your time of arrival and position in the queue. People who travel should be aware of this. So, the question is, is there a way to forestall Microsoft's priority status to our systems? Yes, there is, and at least we should appreciate Microsoft for putting it in for us to use should we need it. Here's how.

Note that the first method is for users of Win10 pro or higher. For win10 home users, you will need to edit your registry, and should you want to attempt it, please back up your registry first. You have been alerted.

1. press windows+r to bring up the run edit box and type "gpedit.msc" without the quotes.
2. Shift+tab to the tree view. Arrow down to "Administrative Templates" then arrow right to open the tree.
3. arrow down to "network" or press N to get there quicker, and again press the right arrow key to open it up, then press "qos packet scheduler".
5. Now tab once to a list box. Arrow down to "Limit Reservable Band Width" which is disabled by default. Press enter on it.
6. Tab twice to a radio button group. Arrow down to "enabled". Tab three times more. at The third tab, there is a spin box. Use that to set the limit that Microsoft can take from your band width. I have mine set to zero. This will ensure that when you are downloading a huge file, or when your system is engaged in some resource intensive work, Microsoft will not be able to get in front of your activity queue until you have completed things at your end.

I will also include the video from which I obtained this info. I have not written up a tutorial info for Win10 home users because a bit more work is needed, and I figured the info on the video will give better direction to you.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ipj1z97nreehth/Windows is Taking Your Bandwidth _ Let's Fix It!.mp4?dl=1
 
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There's a lot of misunderstanding about that so called "tweak". The QoS Packet Schedule has been around since Windows XP.
What it does, is 20% of the bandwidth is reserved "only when QoS aware applications are running"...and those "QoS aware applications" are ones specifically programmed to coordinate with the host operating system to guarantee them (reserve for them) some bandwidth. If you're not running a "QoS aware application"...100% of the bandwidth is available to you.

People mistake it to be..."20% of the bandwidth is reserved for the OS for...<who knows what>". But, what it is...is, for a QoS aware application...it will ask (request) the OS to guarantee at least 20% of the bandwidth for that application.

When a non QoS aware/coded app isn't running, you have 100% of the bandwidth available to you.

When you nix this setting with the registry tweak or gpedit, you're just removing that allocation of 20% to any QoS aware apps you might run in the future.
 
Yeah, this is very similar to people futzing with MTU settings, it's always a bad idea.

The reasons you can't get the bandwidth you think you should amplify with the speed of the connection. Even with all the upgrades done by ISPs in the US over the last year specifically, anything more than 300mbps is almost unusable by a single user. This has to do with the long range links that connect our cities... they're only so big, and we have far too many end points on the network to allow any individual endpoint to saturate.

Just like the LANs we build. If you slap in a server with a 10gbps NIC, that has the ability to saturate that, only 10 desktops running at 1gbps will fill it up. Yet, often offices that have that technology will have more like 100 endpoints. But yet, even the only 10 of them can saturate at once!


Cox owns a 600gbps link that connects Phoenix to LA. I can tell you over 80% of my traffic uses that line! Now, I only have a 250mbps cable connection. If everyone in Phoenix had the same speed, that's only 2,400 of us and boom... that thing is full. What happens after that is down to traffic shaping, and heaven help you if you need to get onto another carrier's network... The peering is an ugly mess too.
 
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