The first (not the only) problem with high quality music streaming is that Uses lots of bandwidth (Vulgar: speed). With a more or less good connection you will never notice anything. Or almost. But if, as is the case with many people in Argentina who are involved in militant federalism, Less than 10 Mbps (Megabits per second), almost everything more or less intense, starting to make a connection, will leave you on foot. The music is about to shut down. YouTube will be pixelated. Netflix is ​​going to freeze. And so on. The frustration is a bit.

Of course, there can be problems as well On the platform; Conversion, for example, sounds great, but failure is much more than acceptable. Also, some flow algorithms are better than others, As it happens in all order of life. But, if all goes well and suddenly the music stops, it’s a good idea to see if anything eats the bandwidth. For this it is better to always have The Task Manager performance tab appears somewhere. Or other system monitor.

One of the culprits Less frequent One such delay is Windows Update; In contrast, device drivers and apps generally stop downloading updates as if they only needed bandwidth. Windows Update works differently, more civilized.

As it is known, On the second Tuesday of each monthUnless an emergency occurs, Windows is upgraded. This means you will have to download several hundred megabytes. In Windows 10 and, of course, in 11, it is possible to optimize the download of updates (Distribution optimizationIn slang), similar to how torrents work, and also, by default, the system does things well enough to never know that tons of data were downloaded. That is, it adapts dynamically to the context and does not interfere with what we are doing, or fail to notice. But due to the bandwidth in most of our country, the default settings of Windows may not be the most suitable.

How is this a somewhat vague phrase Dynamic adaptation? I asked Martin Scarillo, director of technology at Microsoft Argentina, who explained that Windows Update checks to see if the program is online. If not, it needs more bandwidth (say, 80% of availability). On the other hand, if there are other applications or services that require bandwidth, it will pass Windows Update, which does not require the same. I-want-it-not-to-cut priority What do you have while watching TV series, listening to music, etc. If the connection is good, you will not notice anything because 50 Mbps is enough for everything and a little more. Except, of course, you have to share the feedback, but that’s another story.

Now, if the blanket is short, it does not have dynamic adaptation, Skiarilo told me. Like everything you have to share, there comes a time when everyone gets less than they need. Oh, the bell is ringing? really? Well, that’s exactly what happened to me these days. Everything was fine until suddenly Tidal started thundering. I looked at my screen to the right where I have the vital values ​​of the computer and the Task Manager showed that something was taking up almost my entire 9 Mbps. Something that eats at full speed is almost always an upgrade. And we were up to date to make it to Windows. I could not figure out what was going on because the only one who used the connection was Tidal and Tidal is, say, special.

So I decided it was time to try out the feature that came with Windows 10, which lets you Manually determine how Windows Update will use bandwidth. Most importantly, it worked and instantly my data consumption dropped to just one or two megabits per second and I was able to continue listening to music while typing. Let’s go over it.

On Windows 11

To customize the bandwidth used by system updates to your needs, go to Settings in Windows 11 (Windows + I Or Start Button> Settings); Once there, there is the last section Windows Update (Yes, even in the Spanish version, at least not yet). Click on it and you will see four options. I choose პარამეტრებიAdditional options. You have to search when entering advanced options Distribution optimization And click on it; In the new window we will find some new ones (Guess) პარამეტრებიAdditional options. If we click on this label, we will finally achieve what we are looking for.

There are two sections here; Download Settings ი Load. Except in special cases (we will leave another column), only touch is required Download Settings. In other words, what we’re going to do is limit how much speed Windows uses to download its updates. There are two ways: one is simple Set the ceiling to absolute conductivity. That is, set the number in maximum Mbps that the system can use to upgrade itself.

The second, which can be more effective with problematic connections, Tell him to use the measured bandwidth percentage (I.e. available). Both methods have two controls: the bandwidth that Windows Update uses when the dialog is open and in the foreground, and the bandwidth that it uses in the background (Or 99% of cases.). In my workstation ecosystem plus the modest connection, I chose 20% for the background download and 90% for the other script.

On Windows 10

Most computers still use Windows 10 (followed by 7) and the path there is slightly different, though the procedure is the same. Is a bandwidth control used by Windows Update Settings> Update & Security> Advanced Options> Delivery Optimization> Advanced Options.