Force all internet bound traffic via the wireless network

Question

I'm out in the country and have a very poor landline internet connection, the laptop is connected to my home network via a LAN cable. I have better internet connectivity via a mobile phone hotspot, and this is connected via Wifi to the laptop and this is where I want to direct my internet traffic to.

Ideally, I want the laptop to be able to force all internet traffic via the wifi connection, and have ONLY local traffic (destined for other computer on network, NAS etc) go down the LAN connection.

I have read multiple methods of acheiving this, from setting the network metric, changing the order of network adapters in network connections and whilst these seem to work some of the time, it doesn't permanently do it. Windows seems to have its own thoughts on where it wants to send it and it is frustrating, as sometimes I will find the internet is really slow as the computer has overridden my set choice (despite the automatic metric being switched off) and is sending internet traffic down the LAN connection. Whilst the connectivity to the switch is 1Gbps the breakout to the internet certainly isn't! I have my wifi metric set as 1 for the network metric, and the LAN connection set as 9999.

This, but in reverse (as in I want the computer to prefer the wifi connection over the LAN).

https://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/force-windows-7-to-use-wired-connection-over-wireless/

Is there a way to "trick" Windows 7 into thinking the LAN connection has no internet connectivity, thus avoiding sending internet traffic down it alltogether?

Many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hello,

Use route print command to list current local IP routing table, then, use route add command to add the routing entry and specify the next hop of specific network traffic.

Route:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/route_ws2008

Best Regards,
Karlie Weng

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