Limiting bandwith on an Windows 7 machine
- by Mihai Damian
I need to limit the bandwidth on my Windows 7 x64 machine.
In the past (on XP) I've been able to use NetLimiter for similar tasks. However for some reason I can't get it to work anymore. For lower limits the bandwidth tests are able to exceed the limit by 10-50%; higher limits seem to be ignored completely and the bandwidth tests report download speeds of over 10 times the speed I set. I'm using speedtest.net and some similar service from my ISP for these tests.
Anyway, I don't necessarily need a program as complex as NetLimiter since I only need to throttle my machine's bandwidth, not a specific program's.
In case you are wondering why in the world I'd want to cripple my Internet speed, there is a funny story behind this. Long story short, my modem gets random disconnects. Tech support comes in, says my Internet speed is abnormally high and I must be using some tools to somehow make it go faster than it's supposed to and this messes up my modem. I check the connection with another computer and it seems that my PC is the only one in my network that gets abnormal speeds. I reinstall my OS, speed looks normal at first, after I install the batch of 50 or so updates, it goes back to abnormally high speeds and the disconnect problems are not solved.
Now I don't have a clue if the explanation the tech team gave me was just a strategy to lay the blame on someone else, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens if I really reduce my speed to their specification.
Any help appreciated.