▷ How to limit bandwidth in windows 10

What it is useful to know how to limit bandwidth in Windows 10

It may seem silly at first, but there are strong reasons to know the advantages of knowing how to limit bandwidth. As we know, there are companies that provide an Internet service with a ceiling of limited spending on a monthly basis, and consumed that amount of megabytes, we will be paying an extra cost for each mega downloaded, or in your case, we will have very limited download speed.

Well, precisely for this it is useful to limit bandwidth, in this way we can keep track of data expenditure also on our computer, just as if it were a mobile phone. We can better manage our connection, identifying events such as system updates, which consume large amounts of data or downloads from other programs and social networks.

Limiting bandwidth is also very useful if we have several computers at home with Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection and we want to spread the cost proportionally among them. In this way, all users will be able to have a certain amount of data depending on their needs.

Since the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, our operating system implements the so-called activity monitor to easily see the bandwidth used by the updates and the data consumed by our applications.

Without further verbiage, let's go straight to the practical part, and learn more about these options in our system.

View Activity and Bandwidth Monitor in Windows 10

Let's start by looking at this activity monitor to see what information it gives us.

The first thing we will have to do is go to our start menu and click on the gear icon on the bottom left. This will be the access to the Windows configuration panel. Then we must click on the option " Update and security ".

In the right area we must identify the option " Advanced options " and click on it.

Now we navigate to the bottom to click on the option " Delivery optimization ".

In the new window, we will activate, if we wish, the option “allow downloads from other equipment ” with this option we will optimize our bandwidth, since the system will send updates to other equipment connected to the local network to save us from downloading them from the Internet.

To access the Activity Monitor, click on the option with the same name.

Now we will see the statistics of the download and the load of our team in terms of updates, and the other teams in our network. In our case, as the connection is not limited, the system or believes it necessary to use this option on local computers, so it only shows us statistics of update downloads.

Statistics will always be for the last month in progress, and also gives us an average download value.

Limit bandwidth in Windows 10 for updates and apps

In order to limit bandwidth, we will have to take a few steps back until we are in the " Optimization of delivery " section previously seen. In this case we are going to click on " Advanced options ".

Here we will have all the options regarding bandwidth limitation available for upload and download updates. To establish a limit, we will have to activate the corresponding box and place a percentage.

But of course, we will all say, this is only for updates, and the truth is that yes. To limit the use of data by applications and in general our team we will need to go somewhere else.

View bandwidth consumed by applications in Windows 10

Perhaps this option should also be in the same place as the previous one, but the truth is that it is located in a totally different place. Sometimes Windows menus are not as intuitive as they should be and this is the case.

In order to see the data consumed by the applications installed on our computer, we will have to go to the main configuration window and click on the " Network and Internet " option.

Here we will have to go to the " Status " section and click on the " Change connection properties " option.

Now we must click on the option " Set a data limit to help control the use of data on this network."

Now we must access the option " View usage by application " or click on one of the connections at the top.

In the window that appears, we can select the connections that we use in our equipment, in this case they would be the wired network and the Wi-Fi network. In addition, we will see a breakdown of the data consumption of each of the applications installed on our team.

Be careful because this consumption of data is not only that of the Internet, but also in our local network. Here we are shown statistics of the total consumption of applications, not of Internet data consumption.

For example, the iperf application has consumed 27.9 GB of data, but they are entirely on the local network, they are not downloaded from the Internet.

Limit data consumption in Windows 10

If we go back a few steps to the " Status " section again, we will see again the connections of our equipment to the Internet and the network. If in the drop-down list, we select the one that is currently active, in our case the Ethernet one, we can limit the use of data.

We must click on " Set limit ".

A window will appear where we will select time limit and data limit. We must know that this limit will apply to both Internet and local network downloads.

We can also limit the data in the background if we activate the " limit " option in the window prior to this.

If we also go again to " Network and Internet -> Change connection properties ", we will be able to activate the option of " Set as a connection of measured use " so that our team monitors the established data limit.

As these are the options to limit bandwidth in Windows 10, we miss setting a specific limit for applications or for exclusive use of data that is not on the local network. We hope that Microsoft refines these options and puts them all together.

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We hope this information has been useful to you. If you have any problem leave us a comment to see if we can help you.