Recover / Get Back 20 Percent of your Available Bandwidth

Microsoft uses 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes.

Here's the way to get it back:-

Click Start -> Run -> type "gpedit.msc" (Do not include double quotes)

Group Policy Editor gets opened once you execute the above command.


Click Administrative Templates on your left which is under Computer Configuration

Then double click Network on your right and then double click QoS Packet Scheduler

Double Click Limit Reservable Bandwidth

Click the radio button Enabled and change Bandwidth Limit(%) from 20 to 0

You can read the explanation which tells you that

"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."

In Short:-

Local Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QoS Packet Scheduler-->Limit Reservable Bandwidth

Tested on Windows XP Pro, Vista, 7