
close
close
Chance to win $250 in Petri 2023 Audience Survey
In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to manually designate a Wi-Fi network as a metered connection.
I recently found myself having to use a capped Internet connection while I was renting an apartment in Warsaw. Now while 25GB a week ought to be sufficient for the majority of people, because I work from home most of the time, it could be that I would quickly reach the limit and then be forced to work with a reduced download speed of 5MB/sec.
To preserve as much data as I could, I decided to designate the Wi-Fi connection profile as metered, which prevents Windows from downloading updates from Microsoft and from performing other bandwidth-intensive operations. Metered Wi-Fi connections can also come in handy when you simply have an unreliable or slow connection, so you can prevent Windows from performing any bandwidth-hogging activities in the background.
According to Microsoft’s website, a metered connection may limit the amount of data that apps can download, and that you might notice the following changes in OS behavior:
Under certain circumstances, Windows 10 is able to automatically determine whether a Wi-Fi network should be metered, such as when connecting to a mobile hotspot. Applications can also be made aware that the device is using a metered connection, although the only example I’ve seen of this is Outlook 2016, which when a metered network is detected will prompt you before updating your Inbox.
Follow the instructions below to set a Wi-Fi connection as metered in Windows 10.
Set a metered network connection in Windows 10 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
Windows 10 currently only supports the ability to set Wi-Fi networks as metered connections. This feature doesn’t apply to wired Ethernet network connections.
More in Windows 10
Microsoft Offers Temporary Fix for Start menu or UWP App Freezing Issues on Windows 11 and 10
Jan 26, 2023 | Rabia Noureen
Microsoft Releases a Script to Recover Some Windows App Shortcuts Deleted on Friday 13
Jan 16, 2023 | Rabia Noureen
[Updated] Microsoft to Fix Defender Bug Deleting Windows Apps Shortcuts from Taskbar
Jan 13, 2023 | Rabia Noureen
Microsoft FastTrack Now Helps IT Admins Deploy Windows Autopatch at No Additional Cost
Jan 13, 2023 | Rabia Noureen
Microsoft's January Patch Tuesday Updates Fix 98 Windows Vulnerabilities
Jan 11, 2023 | Laurent Giret
Most popular on petri