Cellular in Windows 11 with Ethernet, constantly disconnecting and reconnecting

Question

So, the organization I work for has a few hundred Getac tablets still on Windows 10 and we are looking to upgrade them to 11 yet we are having this long-standing issue with the cellular connection constantly connecting and disconnecting. The current setup has a SIM card installed in the tablet, and we also have WIFI hotspots wired over ethernet that are used to connect Axon cameras to the tablet. There is no SIM in the hotspots thus we have to manually set an IP in Windows to leave the Gateway field blank so that Windows doesn't try to force Ethernet as the default connection. This worked fine in Windows 10 as the fMinimizeConnections and IgnoreNonRoutableEthernet keys were created, and they still work on Windows 10 yet on Windows 11 it seems IgnoreNonRoutableEthernet may not be a functioning key anymore and now the ethernet stays connected yet the cellular is constantly connecting and disconnecting. I have also tried using the metrics feature but that doesn't seem to work with cellular or not at all. Is there any workaround for this or was that key deprecated?

*** Moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Internet and connectivity ***

Answer 1

Hello,

By default, the network card or network priority of Windows 11/10 is as follows:

Ethernet (LAN) > Wi-Fi (WLAN) > Cellular Network

When connecting to multiple wired networks, the faster the link speed, the higher the priority

The above conclusions are based on two important concepts and the working mechanism of Windows network:

Hop: In computer networks, a hop is a value assigned to a specific network card IP route, indicating the cost of using the route. The lower the hop value, the higher the network priority.

Automatic hop: When the Windows routing table contains multiple routes to the same destination, the system selects the priority network through the automatic hop function.

I recommend that you open the PowerShell command as an administrator to specify the network connection priority. First execute the following command to view the detailed information of each network card.

Get-NetIPInterface | Format-Table -AutoSize

The main focus is on the following columns:

InterfaceAlias ​​- NIC name

IfIndex - NIC index number

InterfaceMetric - NIC metric number

Execute the following PowerShell command to modify the cellular NIC priority so that its metric number remains the lowest among all NICs.

Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceIndex "10 " -InterfaceMetric "15"

Note: The NIC index number and NIC metric number should be modified according to your actual environment.

I hope the information above is helpful.

Best regards

Zunhui

Answer 2

We're having the same issue with the fMinimizeConnections and IgnoreNonRoutableEthernet registry keys, with the latter apparently not functioning in the same manner on the current Windows 11 23H2 OS as they did in Windows 10. Modifying the cellular NIC priority as mentioned above did not fix our problem - which is attempting to force a secure access VPN connection on Windows logon to use the active cellular modem service as the priority network to then connect to and authenticate on our domain. This is while having a separate physical laptop Ethernet connection in the vehicle (Panasonic Arbitrator system) to the recorder.

We've also played around with local Group Policy Windows Connection Manager (simultaneous connections), and network adapter priority metrics settings in the Windows network adapter for each active device connection, all to to no avail.

Following this Question for any future updates/comments.

Answer 3

One of our techs found a temp solution, just set the ethernet that you don't want to be the primary internet connection's set the link speed in control panel to 100mbps (full or half duplex) instead of 1gig and the other connection should take priority.

Answer 4

This doesn’t seem to work anymore either. Any idea?

Answer 5

You can try 10mbps half duplex and reboot. Unless MS patched that out.