Windows XP reserves 20% of the bandwidth

Myth

Microsoft Windows XP reserve 20% of your bandwidth for its own purposes.

Reality

False,though there are many technical reports supporting the fact that XP is stealing bandwidth.

Explanations

Windows XP makes an optimized use of the bandwidth, 100% of the bandwidth is available almost all the time for shared application, unless an application specifically request priority bandwidth through the QoS. By default 20% of the bandwidth is allocated for these special requests, but under normal circumstances this reserved bandwidth can be freely used by any shared application or data flow.

QoS :

Network Quality of Service (Qos) regroups the various mechanism and techniques used to prioritize one type of dataflow or a program running on a network. This is done when there is network congestion.

However you can modify the % of reserved bandwidth, just follow the steps below:

Type GPedit.msc in the Run console.

Expand the local computer policy, administrative templates and the Network branch.

Select the QoS Packet Scheduler and in the right window you will get limit reservable bandwidth settings.



Enable this option and then modify the % bandwidth. You can reset it from 20% to 0%, though this will not bring any increase in connection.