VM Windows Server on "metered connection"

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150d

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Mar 23, 2022
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Hi,

I'm running a number of VMs with Windows Server (2022 and 2025) on Proxmox v8.2.7 using VirtIO drivers v0.1.262 (also tried an earlier version.)

On all of those VMs Windows reports network on a "metered connection", even though this is disabled in the UI and in the Registry ("NetworkList/DefaultMediaCost"). Interestingly, it does not happen on a Windows 10 machine, only on Windows Server VMs. It doesn't seem to matter whether the VM is configured for VirtIO NIC or E1000.

Has anyone ever encountered this and managed to solve it? There are a few mentions of this problem over the internet, but no solution that I could find. Many of them are in a virtual environment, not only Proxmox/QEMU, but also HyperV. It's completly unclear whether this is an issue with the drivers, a bug in Windows Server or a settings problem.

Regards
 
There are some known bugs in VirtIO version 0.1.262. Please create a snapshot of your VM and install a slightly older version of the network driver for VirtIO, this may already solve your problem.
 
Afraid not, no change with VirtIO v0.1.248 from your link. I had already tried v0.1.240, also nothing.

Additionally I just tried the Realtek NIC emulation - still "metered connection".
 
I just checked our Server and two customer clusters.
All 2022 VMs show this.

VirtIo Driver in use by those vms: 100.94.104.24800 & 100.93.104.24000
Our System is running Proxmox 8.2.2, our customers are using 8.2.5

Does this come with any downsides? We just saw this while investigating performance Issues at one of those customers.
We believe their issues aren't caused by this, networking performance seems to be fine on them.
 
meeps said:
Does this come with any downsides? We just saw this while investigating performance Issues at one of those customers.
We believe their issues aren't caused by this, networking performance seems to be fine on them.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure whether the indication is even true:

In Windows Updates, there should be a note to the effect that only critical updates will be downloaded automatically. On my machines, I did not see this notice. On the other hand, my machines are served by a local WSUS, maybe this is a different matter again. In any case, there is a toggle "download all updates even on metered connection", so this is fixable.

MS Outlook should show a warning message "not auto-downloading messages while on metered connection." I can't verify because none of my servers have Outlook installed.

All "apps" should be able to (not required to) behave differently on a metered connection. But again, I don't have any "apps" in use that I could check.

So no, it doesn't seem to make a big difference. It is not documented very well what might be affected, so it still makes me a wee bit uncomfortable. :-I
 
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