Changing priority of network connections windows 7

If you have a device that can connect to networks in multiple ways, you may wonder how Windows determines the priority of the installed network adapters. Say you want to make sure that your computer uses a wired connection when available as the main means of connecting to a network, and a wireless connection otherwise.

Network connection priorities are configured in the Windows Control Panel. The configuration setting is deeply hidden, and you have to click several times before you finally reach the settings. Open the Windows Control Panel. You can do that with a click on the start orb, and the selection of Control Panel from the Windows start menu.

Find Change Adapter Settings under the left sidebar and click the link. This opens a new screen with all of the configured network connections of the operating system.

This opens the Advanced Settings under Network Connections. Left-click on of the connections to select it, and use the up and down arrow buttons to move it up or down in the listing. The topmost connection is the default connection used on the computer.

This way, you can change the network adapter binding priority under Windows 7. You need to click on the ok button after making changes to save them. The new network connection priority is active from that moment on. Here is a quick tip how to find out which connection is used on your computer right now. At the bottom you find adapter names and their connection status and history.

Just access a website or service that requires a network or Internet connection and watch the information under Networking in the task manager. The network adapter used to establish the connection should show bandwidth utilization, while other adapters should not show anything. The computer can detect more than one wireless network at a time. This article explains how to prioritize the wireless network you want to connect to first.

Click Start , and in the search field, type Network and Sharing Center. In Network and Sharing Center , click Manage wireless networks. Click the connection to be given priority e.

Connection 2 has less priority than Connection 1 , and then click Move up. The next time it is detecting the networks, the computer will give more priority to Connection 2 than to Connection 1. Your opinion is important to us: Send your opinion on these articles using the comments field at the bottom.

You'll be helping us to improve the content. Thank you very much! Need more help? Expand your skills. The only thing that runs on startup is my anti-virus program. At least from what I can control in msconfig. Upon rebooting the routing tables will be rebuilt using ARP-discovery, causing the new metrics to be assigned to the routes. The automatic metrics are based on connection speed, so while a Mbps LAN connection beats a 54Mbps The adapter binding order in your first bullet is unlikely to be useful here.

The interface metrics in your second bullet should have done the trick Can you provide the "IPv4 Route Table" section of a netstat -rn command? Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 3 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 73k times. So far I've tried to prioritize LAN the following: Moving the "Local Area Connection" up in the advanced settings as shown in How to change the network connection priority in Windows 7 and deactivating the automatic metric and assigning the values 1 to lan and 2 to the wifi adapter as seen at the end of How to change the binding order of network adapters in Windows XP and in Windows Improve this question.

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