Reduce bandwidth usage in windows 10.

There have been several articles in the press (e.g. ZDNet) which point out that Microsoft added a feature that, if turned on, automatically redistributes updates peer to peer.  That is, your home network can get saturated by updates being sent from your machine to other machines.  That includes W10 itself.  This is the sort of thing that would make sense if we were living in a world of GB connections, but not in a world where ISPs throttle you after a certain point per month, or bandwidth costs money.  (If you've designated your Wifi or wired network as a metered connection, it is not supposed to be using it, so this is irrelevant to you.)  If you want to turn it off, it's pretty easy:

Start | Settings | Update & Security | Windows Update | Advanced Options |

                                        Choose how updates are delivered |

Then turn "Updates from more than one place" to Off.

This seems to be helping my home network a lot -- I was getting dialup speeds for downloads from sites that I normally have great connectivity to, and OneDrive and OneNote had become pretty much unusable due to sync errors.  So even if you don't have a metered connection, if you are seeing a slowdown after updating to W10, I'd suggest trying this out and seeing if it helps.

Good luck.

Thanks for your reply.

I'll check it out.

I noticed that feature too (you can find it under Settings\ Update and Security\Windows Update click "Advanced options" - it is rather tucked away!). As far as I can see there is no way of throttling the amount of bandwidth I'm giving Microsoft permission to use? It would be great if that was something the user could choose, to prevent the feature slowing up their user experience, getting the user 'throttled' by their ISP,  or costing them extra.

I found myself a bit torn about whether to turn this feature on or off:

• The argument for leaving it 'on' -  we all want to help each other, don't we? And sometimes the updates being circulated will be security patches, and so it's to everyone's benefit if immunity to the latest exploit gets out into the community as soon as possible. 
• The argument for 'off' -  are Microsoft simply saving money by using the community as unpaid software distributors? Is that an unpaid job I want? "Save The Big Corporation Money!" is not likely to be among my favourite good causes any time soon.

As I say, it would be easier to choose 'on' if I could control the amount of bandwidth I am donating, or, perhaps, have a setting allowing me to volunteer my resources for circulating security updates only. My system has it 'off' for now. Do other folks feel the same?

BTW, also notice that by default Windows 10 wants to send feedback to Microsoft ' Automatically' and to send 'Full usage data'. These are  settings you can find under Settings\Privacy\Feedback & Diagnostics. I'm not sure how much bandwidth THAT uses, either. Obviously Microsoft are going to prefer to have the maximum data - for system improvements as well as any commercial use of the user data. Sometimes users will prefer not to give so much information due to privacy concerns, or not to allow so much uploading (for bandwidth or performance reasons). At least here there are other settings (e.g. to send only 'basic' feedback and only once a week.)

In General, I thought the default 'Express settings' one encounters during installation were often very self-serving for Microsoft. I found this article  http://www.howtogeek.com/224352/what%E2%80%99s-the-difference-between-windows-10%E2%80%99s-express-or-custom-setup/ helpful to understand what I was being asked to agree to & decide whether I wanted to customize things..  

Hi Ledsd,

We appreciate your time and efforts to share the information in the Microsoft Community Forum.

Hope the above information will help other community members who are facing the same issue. 

Kindly let us know if you need any further assistance with Windows. We are glad to assist you.

Thank you.

I too can no longer tolerate the bandwidth saturation from the Windows update agent.

I recently attached my desktop Win10 system to an ethernet port on my Tomato router. Tomato is a router-centric Linux distribution that is available for a number of models. I am specifically using the Shibby Tomato distribution that can be found at:

http://tomato.groov.pl

Some have pursued Tomato "Quality of Service" (QoS) controls, but I turned instead to the "Bandwidth Limiter" found in Shibby Tomato.

I enabled the limiter globally, then also for the "Default Class for unlisted MAC / IP's in LAN (br0)" and set it for an up/download rate of 600 kbit/s, with a ceil of 800 kbit/s. This will limit bandwidth on the devices that are physically attached to the ethernet ports, guaranteeing remaining bandwidth for the WiFi.

Win10's task manager is now reporting a download rate that hovers quite close to (and sometimes slightly over) the ceil. Now when any Windows device makes excessive bandwidth demands, I have a network available to constrain them.

Tomato will run on very inexpensive routers. The Linksys WRT54G can be found for around $5, and the 200 MHz MIPS processor inside it can perform this function quite well.

I hope Microsoft broke some EU law with this ridiculous stunt. A fine on Microsoft like that $2.7B fine they just levied on Google would make up for some of the hassle that having WUDO as the default setting has caused. 

Microsoft KNOWS that people have limited bandwidth.

Microsoft KNOWS that people have to pay extra when they go over, sometimes a lot extra.

Microsoft KNOWS that having WUDO as the default setting, something that your average computer user is not going to know, very easily could cause somebody to go over their limit unknowingly. 

Microsoft SHOULD BE FINED for this. Better yet, a class action lawsuit should make Microsoft pay back their customers who have gone over.

In the end, I'm done with Microsoft. Looks like I'll be an Apple user starting with my next computer. Too many absolutely ridiculous stunts by Microsoft - like that horrific attempt to force people to update to Windows 10. I didn't shut my computer off for months for fear that it would update automatically. **** you, Microsoft.

YES! Microsoft should be fined.

Its quite sad to note that Microsoft will ever develop such changes to empty our pockets. Mr. Bill Gate we are not responsible for your domestic issues then why your software eager to destroy our homes? I connected internet and start typing a letter in MS word after 25 minutes 1.6 GB bandwidth was used automatically its quite annoying. I have an expensive hp laptop where I can't install Windows7 too. Mr. Gate you shutdown our gates. Thanks