Something in Windows is eating my internet bandwidth

[jana519]

So I just acquired a new Thinkpad T440 with Windows 10, coming from a previous Thinkpad T420 with Windows 7. I noticed when using Windows 10 almost everything related to network speed is slower, and having very slow internet to begin with any loss of speed becomes very noticeable.

One thing I did was disable OneDrive and that seemed to speed things up, but overall things are still slower in Windows 10 than Windows 7. I feel like something is eating my internet bandwidth, but I don't know exactly what. Does anybody know what might be causing the slowdown?

 

[mikeymikec]

Fire up Task Manager (right-click on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, click on 'Task Manager'), go into the processes tab, sort by network usage.

Chances are it's a svchost (I have a Win8x machine here that refers to them as 'service host' processes that you can expand) process which houses 'delivery optimisation' and 'windows update', ergo it's Windows Update that is downloading.

 

[WelshBloke]

Doesn't windows 10 do that thing where it uses your bandwidth to upload updates to other users?

 

[mikeymikec]

Doesn't windows 10 do that thing where it uses your bandwidth to upload updates to other users?

On your own network, I thought...? And that feature can be disabled in Settings > Update > Advanced setting (I don't rememeber how that final navigation point is labelled)

 

[WelshBloke]

On your own network, I thought...?

Does it for WAN or LAN AFAIK depending on the setting. You can turn if off either way.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Windows 10 also downloads OS updates whenever it feels like it, then tells you a reset is required and will happen when it decides it's a good time.

I can't prove this, but I have a nagging suspicion that Windows update bandwidth theft doesn't show up in Task Manager.

 

[jana519]

Fire up Task Manager (right-click on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, click on 'Task Manager'), go into the processes tab, sort by network usage.

Chances are it's a svchost (I have a Win8x machine here that refers to them as 'service host' processes that you can expand) process which houses 'delivery optimisation' and 'windows update', ergo it's Windows Update that is downloading.

I did the Task Manager test, thanks. There wasn't a single process that consistently drew bandwidth from what I saw. But a few processes did flash at 0.1MB/s at random times. One was called Microsoft Telemetry.

Keep in mind, my home internet is tethered off my cellular network, which has 2G internet at 150Kb/S max speed. So anything drawing 0.1MB/s is over half my internet bandwidth.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yeesh. Switch on the metered connection IMO. That ought to nail most if not all of the auto updating, then switch off the metered connection when you're OK with the machine updating (which you ought to have a regular schedule for).

Also, in Settings > Privacy, switch down telemetry to basic if you haven't already. I'd probably take an axe to a lot of default Win10 apps in the hopes of stopping unnecessary traffic, and if you have anything like a Microsoft account login and/or OneDrive, I'd knock all of that on the head. Lose Live Tiles as well.