When a laptop has both wireless and wired connection at the same time, we want to make sure the network traffic is going through the ethernet cable first instead of going via air. A lot of research was telling me that Windows has the preferred route to higher throughput interface. I found this to be true on Windows 7 that it assigned metric 10 on the wired connection and metric 25 on wireless. Here is the problem... When I have both network connection on and start trasfer files from a server, in Task Manager networking tab I can see the traffic is going through the wired connection as expected. However, if the laptop is "on wireless first" without network cable, then connection to a server, say Server1, is initialed, Windows 7 seems memorize this path or route. Later after the ethernet cable is plugged in, the traffic going to Server1 will be still on wireless interface rather than the wired connection. Looks like metric is not playing the magic any more once there is cache in the system. On the other hand, with both connection on, if I try to connect to another server, the wired connection will be taken. To me, the metric only works for the first time connection. Any thought to correct the problem and make ethernet connection always be the preferred route?

Hi, From Vista, it made a change to how we handle existing sockets. After plugging in, connections will not be switched over, you must re-establish the connection in order to make use of a wired connection. For more information, please refer to the following blog. http://blogs.technet.com/b/clint_huffman/archive/2009/04/19/windows-prefers-wired-connections.aspx Best Regards, NikiPlease remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Niki, Thank you for your reply. That makes sense to the issue. To reset the connection, what I know is disable and enable the network connection, although it's not the preferred way to do it. By any chance do you know how I can reset or clear the socket info by any command like net sh?

Hi, Please try to reset TCP/IP to check if it can reset the connection. Please open CMD witn administrator privilege. netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt Best Regards, NikiPlease remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

After running the command on Windows 7, it requires a reboot as it stated. That really doesn't make sense to me. Looks like there is no workaround for this issue since Microsoft chose to cache the socket info.

Hi springman, I set the wireless connection to not connect automatically. Save connection (network) information, yes. Then when the notebook is docked for a wired a connection it uses that one. When undocked, it of course, shows the wireless connection available and I take one step to connect. I see no need to have the wireless automatically connect in the wired environment. That may be a workaround for you also.

Thank you Nano for your suggestion. Looks like people just can't be lazy. :-)