Why would Windows use slower network interface despite route metrics?

Why would Windows use slower network interface despite route metrics?

On my previous notebook, the Dell/Broadcom wireless adapter had an option to automatically disable wireless when a wired network is connected, so I never dealt with multiple active interfaces. My current system has an Intel wireless adapter, and they apparently haven't figured out how to turn it off when there is a wired connection. Unless I explicitly remember to disable wireless when docked, the connection is active.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 355

Total answers/comments: 1

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Guest [Entry]

"A long shot, but if you are running a backup to another local host on your LAN, perhaps that is changing things somehow.

Any TCP/IP stack can infer that, if a network adapter is set to something like 192.168.111.1 subnet 255.255.255.0, then it can reach any address 192.168.111.2 through 192.168.111.255 simply by sending traffic out of that interface. It wouldn't touch the default gateway, and indeed, Windows may be ""short circuiting"" for some reason and not bothering to consult the route table for a directly connected subnet.

It also may be due to NetBIOS sending out a broadcast on both interfaces and then Windows received a reply from your machines via the wireless first, so it continued to used that interface for further traffic. This is a very long shot, I don't know too much about the internals of NetBIOS."