How to change the Limit Reservable Bandwidth in Windows

Update: It has been brought to my attention from a collegaue that the idea of QOS taking up 20% of the bandwidth is actually a myth. Microsoft has an official response to this that you can read here and it’s been debunked on LifeHacker as well.

For their own use, Microsoft by default reserves 20% of your bandwidth for QOS or Quality of Service usage like Windows update.  Well I don’t usually use Windows Update on a daily basis and I don’t think a majority of users do, so why reserve a bandwidth for it?  To remove this limit, open up the Run interface then enter “gpedit.msc”:

This opens the group policy editor window. Under the Local Computer Policy choose Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > QOS Packet Scheduler > Limit Reservable Bandwidth. My screenshot below should guide you if you get lost on the navigation tree:

This will open the Limit reservable bandwidth window and you will see that by default it is not configured.

So why would you change a limit if it is not configured anyway?  Well you can see the reason if you click the explain tab:

…By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default.

Now that we know that limit is indeed 20% by default, go back to the Setting tab then choose enabled > then put a zero value on the limit then click OK:

I am yet to benchmark the results of this setting.  In theory it should add 20% to your bandwidth by removing this limit.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.