Svchost.exe bandwidth priority too high

yogalD · 03 Aug 2016

So sometimes when I notice my internet is ridiculously slow I check task manager and in the Performance tab it says my network usage is very high (in terms of my internet speed) even when I'm not doing anything. If I go into the processes tab and sort by network usage everything is ~0 Mbps.
Good thing is my motherboard LAN driver comes with the Killer Network Manager. Using this utility it shows me that Host Process for Windows Services (svchost.exe) is using up all my internet bandwidth. So it must be because of Windows Update or something else.

Fair enough, but why is it taking bandwidth priority over everything else? It's basically impossible to use the internet while Windows Update (or whatever else it is) is running, and it's even more ridiculous that Windows is hiding its network usage from Task Manager. I don't understand why in Windows 10, svchost gets priority over everything else, when Windows 7 actually allowed other applications to share the bandwidth with Windows Update. Even setting the priority to "low" in the Killer Network Manager does nothing to help, I have to manually limit its allowed bandwidth, which is not ideal because Windows Update should be running at full speed if nothing else is requiring internet.

Is there anything I can do other than having to keep monitoring and manually adjusting svchost's bandwidth allowance? Because it's plainly ridiculous that I have to even be asking this question.

yogalD · 10 Aug 2016

It's not a CPU/memory usage issue, it's a bandwidth priority issue. I want Windows to auto-update, just let the web browsers have higher priority than Windows Update. Those "fixes" disable automatic updates.

yogalD · 10 Aug 2016

That only applies to CPU priority

TairikuOkami · 10 Aug 2016

How to stop Windows 10 from using your PC's bandwidth to update strangers' systems | PCWorld

yogalD · 10 Aug 2016

TairikuOkami said:

How to stop Windows 10 from using your PC's bandwidth to update strangers' systems | PCWorld

Already have that disabled, and on a side note the "share updates with other PCs on the network" feature doesn't even work.

manish9009 · 10 Aug 2016

Used to work on old xp machines .. please check if following fix is still available for Windows 10
Increase Internet Speed by 20% | Internet

reservable bandwidth is the one reserved for internal operational of windows such as location and windows updates.

yogalD · 10 Aug 2016

Thanks, I'll try it out and see if it works.
Although why should I have to do this when Windows 7 handled bandwidth just fine? Also, rather strange that it's only 20% by default in Windows XP but 80% in Windows 10.

Edit: after further reading it appears that this setting applies to any program reserving bandwidth - so if I have something higher priority like a videoconference that needs more bandwidth it will only be able to reserve a low amount of bandwidth, which would negatively affect its performance. So this solution is not really acceptable - the problem here is Windows Update reserving bandwidth when in reality its priority should be lower than applications the user is running.

yogalD · 24 Aug 2016

Bump

Also I noticed that in Task Manager, on a virtual machine, I can see how much bandwidth svchost.exe is taking. But on my real PC, it shows 0 Mbps. For whatever reason, on my main PC, Task Manager is hiding the bandwidth usage of svchost from me... but not on a virtual machine.

And I know I've said it before but it's just ridiculous that I have to limit and micromanage svchost's bandwidth usage myself when Windows should be doing it, even more so that no one has even acknowledged the problem exists.

Svchost.exe bandwidth priority too high

Svchost.exe eating up bandwidth! (priority too high)