Windows 10's definition of "unused bandwidth" leaves a lot to be desired.

[gomipile]

I've had a Windows 10 update downloading for a couple days, and it's at 27% now. Windows 10 is supposed to only use "unused bandwidth," yet even on the same computer, YouTube ads often refuse to load because my browser can't get enough bandwidth to properly load them. I'd think that sine the browser is on the same computer, Windows 10 would be smart enough to see that an application is trying to use bandwidth and ease up a bit on the "background" downloading until the application gets as much as it wants before continuing to download the update.

Is there a way to force Windows 10 to use a reasonable definition of "unused bandwidth" for its downloads? I don't want to just go in and set a low value for its cap, because I'd like this update to be done with sometime soon.

[halfeye]

I've had a Windows 10 update downloading for a couple days, and it's at 27% now. Windows 10 is supposed to only use "unused bandwidth," yet even on the same computer, YouTube ads often refuse to load because my browser can't get enough bandwidth to properly load them. I'd think that sine the browser is on the same computer, Windows 10 would be smart enough to see that an application is trying to use bandwidth and ease up a bit on the "background" downloading until the application gets as much as it wants before continuing to download the update.

Is there a way to force Windows 10 to use a reasonable definition of "unused bandwidth" for its downloads? I don't want to just go in and set a low value for its cap, because I'd like this update to be done with sometime soon.

You WANT to see adverts?

Advertisers that don't pay Microsoft for your eyeballs are obviously scum, but don't worry, there won't be any of those soon. I'll stick with Win 7 thanks.

[gomipile]

You WANT to see adverts?

Advertisers that don't pay Microsoft for your eyeballs are obviously scum, but don't worry, there won't be any of those soon. I'll stick with Win 7 thanks.

Huh? No, if the ad fails to load for a while, then YouTube reverts to a black screen with a play icon, which attempts to start playing the ad again when I press it. This cycle repeats several times before I can get past some ads. It is interesting that, once the ad is done, YouTube dynamically adjusts video quality downwards and plays fine. It seems like the ads refuse to dynamically lower their bitrate in order to play.

Personally, I refuse to use adblockers for moral reasons, though I do have Flash disabled for security reasons.

[Silfir]

Start using adblockers for functionality reasons if your bandwidth is that limited. It's what's commonly called self-defense. Make extensive use of the whitelist - or set it to only block the sites you tell it to.

Given that ads can do end up delivering malware if they're not properly screened, I don't think running an adblocker by default is in the least bit immoral, unethical, or anything of the sort. It's basic security.

[gomipile]

Start using adblockers for functionality reasons if your bandwidth is that limited. It's what's commonly called self-defense. Make extensive use of the whitelist - or set it to only block the sites you tell it to.

Given that ads can do end up delivering malware if they're not properly screened, I don't think running an adblocker by default is in the least bit immoral, unethical, or anything of the sort. It's basic security.

The specific problem here is with YouTube preroll video ads, and I think the majority of your comment is irrelevant to YouTube preroll video ads. I could be wrong, though. Also, I already mentioned that I disable Flash, and I thought that the majority of malicious ads exploited weaknesses in Flash.

I could, however, be incorrect.

[cobaltstarfire]

The specific problem here is with YouTube preroll video ads, and I think the majority of your comment is irrelevant to YouTube preroll video ads. I could be wrong, though. Also, I already mentioned that I disable Flash, and I thought that the majority of malicious ads exploited weaknesses in Flash.

I could, however, be incorrect.

You are incorrect, you can suffer malicious redirects and such from ads even with flash disabled.

[DodgerH2O]

I'll assume you've done a simple Google search and turned off the P2P update function that W10 uses. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any easy way to tell the software how much bandwidth to use, I'd just suggest doing the update while you're not otherwise using the computer. Unless you have issues with roommates/family I'd just use the Metered Connection trick to stop updates while you're actively using the computer and leave the system updating overnight (or whenever you get your sleep.)

[Avilan the Grey]

It seems to me you have to take the sour grape and eat it: Do a manual dedicated update.
You simply have too bad of an internet connection for the background download to work.

[wobner]

I feel your pain. I do not have a bad connection, yet microsoft still manages to completely throttle it to the point of rendering anything else virtually incapable of accessing the internet when it decides to download these updates. Its ridiculous.

I can't tell you what to do, only what i have done, and that didn't help. I have disabled all the peer to peer settings i can find, yanked out any apps that might be trying to run in the background, and even started using 3rd party software to disable their ad tracking nonsense. still its throttled, even on a clean install of windows(the last update trashed my machine forcing a reinstall, i'm just now getting back up) has it hogging all the bandwidth. Really, it took longer to do this update than to download a windows 10 install disk, and i was able to continue to use the internet while it was doing that.

I have had microsoft go into powersaver modes and what not while in the middle of downloading files through their own internet browser, so i know full well they are incapable of detecting activity even within their own applications. Even worse, so far in my experience, telling it when to update seems to be more of a suggestion than anything else, one it often ignores.
I really wish i could offer you any help on this at all, but i'm in the same boat. If you find any solutions, I'd love to hear them.

[Porthos]

A sledgehammer approach might be to set your internet connection to Metered Status and then just download updates when you're not actively using the internet. Even that is somewhat kludgy, but it's better than what Microsoft is doing right now.

I get what Microsoft is trying to do here at least in part (force people to download updates so their systems stay secure), but the implementation of it is not very good at all. And the less said about the default P2P behavior, the better.

[veti]

Windows 10 is famed for its aggressive use of bandwidth, and its determination to make sure you get every download it thinks you should have whether you want it or not.

Both Windows 10 updates and YouTube (ads and content alike) are being delivered using a protocol called TCP.

The way TCP works is this: the server sends out a burst of packets of data, and waits for an acknowledgment from the client machine (yours). The acknowledgment will say what packets have been received. Then the server will re-send any that were lost, along with the next burst. If it doesn't get any acknowledgment at all (within a certain time), it'll try again with a smaller burst.

If, however, the server gets a prompt acknowledgment saying "yep, got all those, thanks" - it thinks "great, a good connection!", and increases the amount of data it sends in the next batch of packets. If the acknowledgments say "whoa, we only got 20% of that", then it will dial back to a smaller burst size. Repeat until it reaches some kind of equilibrium. But anytime it starts getting back 'perfect' acknowledgments, it'll again think "yay, more bandwidth!", and start pouring more data into the pipe. For any large, sustained download - which notoriously includes everything related to Windows 10 - the natural tendency is for the connection to expand to fill all the available bandwidth and drown out anything else.

This is what Windows 10 (or anyone else, really) means when they talk about "unused" or "available" bandwidth.

(If you've ever sat watching a download start up, you may have noticed that it starts slow, but builds up speed until it reaches a limit dictated by your connection speed, then sort of oscillates up and down around that speed cap. This is why.)

There are ways to manage this. Generally it's called Quality of Service, but Microsoft being Microsoft they couldn't use the same term as everyone else, and the relevant bit of W10 is called BITS. Check here (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa362844(v=vs.85).aspx) if you want to try your luck with that.

As for YouTube: I presume that they've put a lot of effort into managing compression of their videos so that even people with poor connections can use them - but I guess they'll also have contracts with their advertisers, which say "your ad will be delivered at such a quality", because advertisers are (a) distrustful and (b) morons. So they're not allowed to compress the advertisers' content.

[thracian]

In addition, not every node on their CDN serves ads, so if you are loading videos from CDN nodes with a better path than the ones serving ads, that can also significantly impact service.

This can also happen in reverse, since not all videos are stored on all nodes. The most popular videos are mirrored between CDNs, and large spikes in viewing ("viral videos") cause the mirroring to be extremely aggressive, making sure each viewer causes and receives the least network congestion possible for their videos.

[wobner]

A sledgehammer approach might be to set your internet connection to Metered Status and then just download updates when you're not actively using the internet. Even that is somewhat kludgy, but it's better than what Microsoft is doing right now.

I get what Microsoft is trying to do here at least in part (force people to download updates so their systems stay secure), but the implementation of it is not very good at all. And the less said about the default P2P behavior, the better.

please correct me if i am wrong, but last time i checked you can only set a connection to metered if its Wi-Fi, hardlines do not have this option or ability. I didn't see gomipile mention connection type(did i miss it?). Unless something changed, unlikely but awesome if it did, hardliners are out of luck. although, i am tempted to buy a wi-fi card and sit the router ontop of the machine, just to have this ability.

@veti thankyou, i'll give the link a read, thank you, but having just reinstalled, i'm not touching anything for a while.

[thracian]

Google indicates a registry edit (http://www.howtogeek.com/262477/how-to-set-an-ethernet-connection-as-metered-in-windows-8-and-10/) can set an Ethernet connection as metered.

[wobner]

Google indicates a registry edit (http://www.howtogeek.com/262477/how-to-set-an-ethernet-connection-as-metered-in-windows-8-and-10/) can set an Ethernet connection as metered.

I stand corrected. The last time i looked this up, two sites(i would have sworn one was howtogeek) said you could do this, but it would have no effect. Good to see that was bunk. Thank you.

[Spojaz]

The most recent update, after eating up my bandwidth, doesn't finish installing on my machine. 18 hours I waited for that spinning circle (with no indicator of what's going on, don't want to scare the grandmas) to finish loading. The original install took about an hour, I decided it was stuck. After smothering my machine, I waited another 5 hours, apparently stalling at the same place, and the third restart let me restore my previous version of windows. I went through this process twice now, and it's my only computer, so I've been getting a lot of reading done. I've been lucky. (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=34549)

[Porthos]

I stand corrected. The last time i looked this up, two sites(i would have sworn one was howtogeek) said you could do this, but it would have no effect. Good to see that was bunk. Thank you.

From what I recall, and I've only looked into this briefly, the things that have no to little effect are the attempts to completely shut down Microsoft's telemetry gathering. No idea whether or not this is one of the things that can in fact be actually modified by poking about with registry edits (I'm mostly a Mac guy and only boot into Windows occasionally).