It is clear that Windows is a system that needs the network to work, although sometimes it can become excessive with the broadband requirement, even not having all the efficiency that it should.
Be that as it may, there may be situations in which the waste that Windows makes of your bandwidth causes loss of Internet access or in the worst case, if after a certain amount of data your rate charges you, you will see yourself with a higher telephone bill than you expected, also practically without realizing it.
That is why it is interesting to know why Windows makes this waste of bandwidth and to know what solutions we can carry out so that this is no longer a problem. Go for it.
Application Processes
It may well happen to us that some application is consuming a lot of bandwidth with internal downloads, to give you an example.
There are other apps that can allow us to monitor and manage bandwidth such as NetBalancer, although we can also use Windows PowerShell for the same task.
To achieve this, we perform the following steps:
- We write PowerShell in the search bar (Windows + Q) and select Execute as an administrator.
- We will create a rule by which we are going to limit the amount of bandwidth available to a particular software, but first we need to find out the name of the .exe file that we are going to want to limit.
- We must write in PowerShell the following, changing Yam Y AppPathNameMatchCondition as appropriate: New-NetQosPolicy -Name CortanaBandwidth -AppPathNameMatchCondition SearchUI.exe -IPProtocolMatchCondition Both -NetworkProfile All -ThrottleRateActionBitsPerSecond 5000000.
- We can also change the value ThrottleRateActionBitsPerSecond to something higher or lower, depending on the program. The string we have written above will result in a limit of 5 Mbps.
Point-to-point downloads
The Windows update system implies that in order to distribute them, given that there are thousands of users with the same system, uses other users to get the files needed for downloads, when Microsoft’s central servers can’t.
This system is known as peer-to-peer (P2P) downloadthe same technique used in torrents.
This system can be of great help so that the central servers do not collapse, in case at certain times they are at their maximum capacity.
The problem is that it can be counterproductive for us, since if our system is used a lot to share updates with other users, the bandwidth may be limited.
To disable this option in Windows 11, do the following:
- We press the key Windows + I so that the Setting.
- We are going to Windows Update and we select Advanced Options.
- Click on Distribution optimization.
- We deactivate the option Allow downloads from other computers.
OneDrive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud service so we can store and protect filesin addition to sharing them and being able to access them from anywhere we want and from any device that is compatible.
It is a system that works very well, but it is true that can cause high consumption of bandwidth depending on the situations.
Depending on how it is configured, we may be continuously transferring data to OneDrive, in addition to some of which may be really large, taking up a lot of the bandwidth of our connection.
This can be limited as follows:
- We open OneDrive from the system tray icon and go to Settingclicking on the drawing of a gear wheel in the upper right.
- Once inside Settings we go to the tab Net.
- We flipped every switch, both from upload speed like Download speed, to option Limit to: and specify the maximum rate.
- The exact figure will depend on the bandwidth that we have available, being the best way to try some amount that we see correct and see how it responds.
Background apps
There are certain Windows applications that continue to run in the background, even though we are not using them. They do this to update themselves, to send us any necessary notification or for any other need they need.
The most normal thing is that we do not need all of them, so we must deactivate the ones we estimate to avoid excessive bandwidth consumption:
- Right-click the Start button and select Setting.
- Now let’s go Applications and then to Apps & features.
- We go to the application that is and click on More options at the right edge of the window (three vertical dots), and then select Advanced Options.
- In the section Background app permissionsin Allow this app to run in the backgroundwe select Never, if we do not want it to work in the background.
Sync settings
Many of the settings we have in Windows, such as themes, language or passwords, are synchronized with our Microsoft account. This means that if we change computers and log in with our credentials, the system will import our account settings to that system.
But this is something that also consumes bandwidth, since this synchronization occurs continuously. If we don’t care manually configure system settings when we are going to use a new computer, we can deactivate this union in the PC and the Windows account.
- We open the Setting (Windows + i) and we go to accounts.
- Once inside, we will see how in the options that come out on the right we have one that says Windows backups.
- Once inside we must deactivate, remember my preferences and if we want too remember my apps.
With everything we have told you today, you will be able to minimize the impact that the Windows system itself and its components have on the bandwidth of your connection.
If you want to tell us what the best solution has been for you, you can tell us about it on our social networks, since we would love to hear about your experience with everything we have told you throughout this article.