If you play competitive online games and occasionally experience massive, inexplicable lag spikes, or if you are on a metered internet connection and notice your data cap draining rapidly, the culprit might be a hidden background service in Windows 11 called “Delivery Optimization.”
By default, Microsoft treats your personal computer as a free server node in a massive, global peer-to-peer network. When your PC downloads a massive Windows Update, Delivery Optimization will silently run in the background and begin uploading pieces of that update from your hard drive to other strangers’ computers across the internet. While this saves Microsoft millions of dollars in server costs, it actively consumes your upload bandwidth and system resources.
To reclaim your bandwidth and stop your PC from acting as a free Microsoft server, you must explicitly disable this feature in the system settings.
Step 1: Open the Windows Update Menu
- Press the Windows Key + I on your keyboard to instantly open the Settings app.
- Look at the navigation pane on the far left side and click on Windows Update (it should be at the very bottom of the list).
- In the right-hand pane, click on Advanced options.
Step 2: Disable Delivery Optimization
- Scroll down to the “Additional options” section.
- Click on Delivery Optimization.
- You will see a master toggle switch labeled: “Allow downloads from other PCs”.
- Click the toggle switch to turn it Off.
What This Actually Does
The phrasing “Allow downloads from other PCs” is intentionally misleading. Turning this switch off does not stop your computer from receiving critical Windows updates. Your computer will simply revert to downloading updates directly from Microsoft’s official, highly secure central servers (which is how updates have worked for decades).
Crucially, turning this switch off completely severs the peer-to-peer connection. Your PC will permanently stop uploading data to strangers on the internet, immediately freeing up your network’s upload capacity and eliminating the random lag spikes caused by background data transfers.
Alternative: Restrict to Local Network Only
If you live in a house with five different Windows 11 computers, completely disabling Delivery Optimization might actually be a bad idea, as all five computers will download the exact same massive update from Microsoft independently, crushing your download speed.
If you have multiple PCs, you should leave the master toggle On, but change the radio button underneath it from “Devices on the internet and my local network” to “Devices on my local network”.
This isolates the peer-to-peer sharing to your physical house. One PC downloads the update from Microsoft once, and then rapidly shares it over your internal Wi-Fi router to your other computers, vastly speeding up the update process without leaking your data to the global internet.