Windows behaviour with multiple internet connections

[porina]

My ISP is having some connection problems tonight. To get some daily gaming activities done on what I hope was a more reliable if higher latency connection, I dug out my backup mobile connection and used that for a while. That is USB connected and appears to the system as 21 Mbps Ethernet. The regular network connection is seen as gigabit Ethernet, with ISP speed somewhat lower. With both present and working, I see internet traffic goes over the gigabit connection. Only if I disable the wired ethernet does it use the mobile connection. Is it as simple a case as higher bandwidth = better? Is there some way to influence the behaviour of this, to make the mobile connection 1st choice for example?

 

I vaguely recall seeing similar on routers while doing CCNA, but have no recollection of what it was called, or if Windows does it.

[Lurick]

You could adjust the metric for the interface. Lower is more preferred I believe.

I know for connection defaults Windows prioritizes wired over wireless so it's probably wired > wireless > usb (or something to that effect) but you can change that as I mentioned by manually setting the metrics for each interface. I think Windows will default to link speed with the faster link being the better metric as well if you have two wired connections (eg: 10Gbps and 1Gbps)

 

[beersykins]

You can change the route on the route table manually in command prompt, you'd just give the wired side a lesser-preferred value.

[porina]

4 minutes ago, beersykins said:

You can change the route on the route table manually in command prompt, you'd just give the wired side a lesser-preferred value.

IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.0.1     192.168.0.12     25
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.1.1    192.168.1.100     75
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    331
        127.0.0.1  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    331
  127.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    331
      192.168.0.0    255.255.255.0         On-link      192.168.0.12    281
     192.168.0.12  255.255.255.255         On-link      192.168.0.12    281
    192.168.0.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      192.168.0.12    281
      192.168.1.0    255.255.255.0         On-link     192.168.1.100    331
    192.168.1.100  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    331
    192.168.1.255  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    331
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    331
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link      192.168.0.12    281
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link     192.168.1.100    331
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    331
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      192.168.0.12    281
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    331
===========================================================================

Ok, it's giving me some PTSD but 192.168.0.1 is my wired ethernet, and 192.168.1.1 is the mobile connection. Lower is more preferred metric if memory serves me right. I might play some more with this later... and wonder if I can do some weird stuff e.g. with dual parallel network, prefer one for internal traffic and keep the other for external?