Windows update takes all my bandwidth

Question

I have windows Seven ultimate 64 bits

When windows is downloading its updates it kills my bandwidth.

Is there a way to limit the maximum bandwidth that windows can take for its updates ?

Answer 1

Is there a way to limit the maximum bandwidth that windows can take for its updates ?

Hi

It can Not be done by the OS. There is a 3rd party software that can help in controlling Bandwidth use, but I do not know if it can control Updates traffic (http://www.netlimiter.com/betas.ph p ).

Otherwise "play" with the time of the Update.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windowsupdate/faq.mspx

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Jack-MVP Windows Networking. WWW.EZLAN.NET

Answer 2

I think the value is not set in KBit but in KByte. Microsoft mixes this as often they can - BITS is using Bits an KBits.

And i think the value you want to change is the downloadbandwidth. You can set the upload-behavior in standard-windows-settings by disabling the delivery optimization or at least limit it to the loacal network - then there will be no uploads at all. The Problem with Windows 10 is that it uses all available downloadbandwidth with a lot of connections so they'll block all other traffic. I never had issues with too much uploadbandwidth used.

Are you really sure that you have the setting for using BITS? Disabling the peering functions of WUDO in control panel is not enough to set Windows Update to use BITS. You have to set "download mode" to 100 - if so, you have to limit Bandwidth of BITS if there still were Problems which shouldn't be the case as BITS doesn't use as many connections as WUDO. If you're using BITS there won't be any uploads.

I'm not really sure what you are doing - when i use group policies to configure WUDO i'm not able to change the settings in control panel anymore, so i think there could be a problem with the deployment of those policies, you can show if the policies are applied by using rsop.msc

Answer 3

Within the Group Policy Editor, I've looked at :

 Local computer strategy > Computer configuration > Administrative templates > Windows components > Delivery optimization

The setting listed is "Max Upload Bandwidth", it is configured. Clicking on it I see it is ENABLED, and set to 1500 (kilobit/s)

(Note that I have the similar Group Policy setting for the BITS protocol as well, which is used instead of WUDO when we don't enable the P2P delivery mode in the Windows Update control panel)

It is still COMPLETELY IGNORED as well (My PC has already rebooted several times since it was set) ! Windows Update still takes ALL my bandwidth with dozens of parallel download threads to the same server.

Really, this MUST be corrected by Microsoft. This is a SEVERE BUG. And we should not need to go to this advanced policy editor to make this setting effective and easy to configure directly in the Windows Update control panel !

This ABUSIVE network usage definitely NOT ACCEPTABLE !

Answer 4

Thanks for pointing that BITS is no longer used. I did not know that and this explains why the BITS network policy are NOT respected.

I'm fed up seeing Windows Update trying EVERYDAY to download a new image , taking ALL my bandwidth, using several dozens of sessions (all to the SAME server 13.107.4.50 in Microsoft's IP space, this address changes occasionnaly but all active sesssions are on the same address, always in 13.107.*.*) instead of just jour like for regular internet traffic, and this for hours.

Microsoft should read the RFC's !

This irritates me because each time this is for trying to download again and again the same BROKEN Windows 10 image, and trying to reboot my PC every night and freezing it on the green screen while trying to "resurect" a version of Windows that it does not find.

Then each morning I need to press the reset button, and then Windows will attempt to boot, but will rollback all changes. And the next evening it will download again the same image.

This makes my Internet connection busy  when I need it for someting else; it breaks my TV programs, or when I'm looking at **paid** VOD and suddenly my program is frozen to unusable state.

Really Microsoft has reinvented Bittorrent but not used the policy implemetned notavely in all BitTorrents client I know.

So my be BITS was a mess, but WUDO now is also a mess (and the fact that Microsoft does not document the policy setting and uses an extremely aggressive configuration is really BAD!)

(I could also speak about the fact that Windows 10 wants to reboot and install the same image everyday and makes my PC stopping working normally as it freezes it completely during the update: if an update fails for some reasons, it should NOT restart automatically (and notably if this was after a revert on boot). It should not even download it again without explicit instruction. It may download other updates, but certainly not those broken Windows 10 builds (that are almost impossible to diagnose of why they fail: I've looked for all solutions on the Internet, none of them apply: I already had that problem since mostly one year after the initial Windows 10 release; it was finally solved in June where I could install a build, but just a few weeks later, a new build comes in, that freezes again with the same symptoms at 22% on the green screen for the boot installer ("can't resurrect in VDS, Windows host not found").

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These constant problems of installation (or reinstallations) of Windows 10 is a nightmare. Many people did not want to upgrade from Windows 7 because of that. All these problems have been present in Windows 10 even before the commercial release last year. Microsoft did not make any efforts to solve them or diagnose them correctly (in fact even the Microsoft support does not know what to do, I've spent hours with them, and in fact they did not understood the problem and did not know the diagnostic tools I used, even though they were written by Microsoft, but not known by their support!)

Seriously, the fact that Microsoft forces people to upgrade and now want them to pay to get the version with an ultimatum ending in 15 days is really bad. And if people have attempted to use the "free" offer, they can't benefit it as Windows 10 fails to install completely in order to register their licence.

When Microsoft will have solved this issue, the offer will be terminated... users that won't have been able to upgrade since one year will need to pay without knowing if this will ever work or will fail again.

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But for now I need a way to stop these downloads or at least reduce their usage. Microsoft MUST honor the policies and MUST read the RFCs: never more than 4 sessions per target server: this is a severe problem also for those that have routers shared by several users on a LAN: a single PC affects everyone (on my PC Windows Update uses more than 120 parallel sessions to force using all bandwidth available, this is really not fair at all, and in fact abusive...