Limit Windows PC Network/Internet Throughput

Question

I have a Vista x64 machine on a fairly fast Internet connection and either buggy drivers for the onboard Ethernet or faulty onboard Ethernet hardware.

If I sustain too high a throughput on the Ethernet connection the network connection within Windows fails and I have to restart the machine to restore connectivity.

I don't believe I can fix this issue (I'm erring towards faulty hardware) but would like to mitigate the effects by limiting my network throughput.

I'm in a position where I would like to download a 5GB file from the Internet (a game install via Steam) and am certain that as this will take a few hours I will not be able to complete the download before my network connection within Windows fails.

From downloading content through a BitTorrent client I have found that by limiting the download throughput to around 150 kilobytes per second I can maintain a steady network connection.

I can't directly limit the throughput of the download through the Steam client and would instead like to find out how I can limit the throughput of my Ethernet connection within Windows.

Any suggestions on how I can achieve this?

Answer 1

To address your immediate problem, Steam supports resuming. You could just check back every half hour or so to pause the download and reset your connection.

For a long term fix, you can buy network cards online for <$10 shipped. If it's a laptop, you could can get a usb nic for about $15. That's a much better solution than limiting your bandwidth.