tweak to disable bandwidth limit in vista

[hclarkjr]

type GPEDIT.MSC in search box

then a Group Policy Object Editor will popup.

Under Local Computer Policy

click or expand Adminstrative Templates

next click or expand Network

then click on Qos Packet Scheduler (remember dont click on the expander here just click on Qos Packer Scheduler)

Now double click Limit reservable bandwidth

(You will see Not configured which is the default settings but in reality Vista has already taken 20% of your bandwidth to reserve for updates and stuff like that.)

Now click on Enabled then in the Bandwidth Limit (%) set it to 0 then click apply then reboot.
tried it and it does work. no big dramatic gain but it works

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hope it is ok to post here and not networking forum as i think it applies to vista

 

[MrChad]

Seems like a snake oil tweak to me.

From TechNet

Specifies the maximum, total percentage of link bandwidth that all QoS-aware applications on this computer can reserve. If no QoS-aware application reserves any bandwidth, then this setting has no effect and all bandwidth is available for use by other applications. If a QoS-aware application reserves more bandwidth than it uses, then the unused, reserved bandwidth is available for use by other applications. The reservation does not ensure that the bandwidth will be available to the QoS-aware application because applications that are not QoS-aware might consume too much bandwidth. For example, the default value of the registry entry reserves 80 percent of the bandwidth for QoS-aware applications, but this does not prevent other applications from using more than the remaining 20 percent of the bandwidth.

The bandwidth reservation is only meaningful if its being actively used, so even if Vista was reserving 20 percent for update downloads (not sure where you got that number), it would only affect your other applications if it was continuously downloading updates and saturating the full 20 percent of bandwidth it reserved.

 

[spyordie007]

This is FUD, as MrChad posted if you have no QoS reservations this setting will make no difference.

MU uses BITS, it's specifically designed to have minimal impact on your network throughput (especially locally).

 

[stash]

This setting has been around since Windows 2000 and the default is 20%.

I think BITS does use QoS, but I doubt it gets anywhere near 20% when it is downloading updates. The whole idea of BITS is to stay out your way and use as little bandwidth as possible.

I'm curious how you validated that this did anything noticeable.

 

[spyordie007]

I'm curious how you validated that this did anything noticeable.

I'm guessing the validation was just that nothing "broke" after making the change.

 

[stash]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

I'm curious how you validated that this did anything noticeable.

I'm guessing the validation was just that nothing "broke" after making the change.

It was a semi-rhetorical question, but I like your answer

 

[hclarkjr]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

I'm curious how you validated that this did anything noticeable.

I'm guessing the validation was just that nothing "broke" after making the change.

actually i ran some speed tests before and after and seen a small improvement like i mentioned i did add that disclaimer for this very reason

 

[stash]

How many times did you run the speed tests before the change and how many times after? You could've been just seeing latency changes between you and the testing server or something like that.

You would need to run it several times before and after and take averages to verify anything actually happened. Or perform a better test