How to Configure Receive Segment Coalescing on Network Adapters in Windows 11 Using PowerShell

Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC) is a hardware offload technology supported by modern network interface cards (NICs) and virtual network switches in Windows 11. RSC operates by intercepting incoming TCP/IP packets belonging to the same connection, coalescing them into larger aggregate segments, and forwarding them to the operating system networking stack in a single operation. This reduces CPU interrupt overhead, minimises cache thrashing, and boosts packet processing throughput on high-bandwidth 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps, and 100 Gbps network connections. However, in certain low-latency gaming, VPN routing, packet capture, or virtualisation environments, RSC can introduce packet jitter or compatibility anomalies. Using PowerShell, you can inspect the operational state of RSC across all network adapters and selectively configure or disable it.

Understanding Receive Segment Coalescing in Windows 11

When an operating system receives a stream of standard 1,500-byte Ethernet frames, the CPU must process an interrupt and traverse the networking stack for every individual packet. At high data transfer rates, packet processing consumes substantial CPU cycles. RSC resolves this by offloading packet merging to the network hardware:

• Hardware RSC: Physical network controllers combine consecutive TCP segments on the fly before passing the payload to NDIS.
• Software / vSwitch RSC: In Hyper-V and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), virtual switches can perform software RSC to merge virtual network packets across guest partitions and the host OS.
• Supported Protocols: Windows 11 supports RSC across IPv4 and IPv6 TCP network traffic.

Inspecting Active RSC Configuration with Get-NetAdapterRsc

To audit whether Receive Segment Coalescing is active across your network interfaces, open PowerShell as an administrator and execute Get-NetAdapterRsc:

Get-NetAdapterRsc

The command lists every physical and virtual adapter alongside its hardware capabilities and operational status:

Name                   IPv4OperationalState IPv6OperationalState IPv4FailureReason IPv6FailureReason
----                   -------------------- -------------------- ----------------- -----------------
Ethernet               True                 True                 None              None
Wi-Fi                  False                False                WLanDriver        WLanDriver
vEthernet (Default)    True                 True                 None              None

To inspect a single adapter in detail, specify its name:

Get-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet"

If an adapter lists False under operational state, check the failure reason column (e.g. WLanDriver, NotSupported, or DisabledInRegistry) to determine why hardware coalescing is inactive.

Disabling Receive Segment Coalescing via PowerShell

While RSC dramatically improves throughput in large file transfers and bulk streaming, it can occasionally cause packet delay variations, unexpected latency in VoIP applications, or drops when routing network traffic through third-party NAT software or packet sniffers (like Wireshark). To disable RSC on a specific network adapter:

Disable-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet"

To disable RSC exclusively for IPv4 while preserving IPv6 coalescing:

Disable-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet" -IPv4

To disable RSC exclusively for IPv6:

Disable-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet" -IPv6

Verify that the operational state has shifted to False:

Get-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet"

Enabling Receive Segment Coalescing via PowerShell

To re-enable hardware or software RSC on an adapter after performance testing or driver updates, use the Enable-NetAdapterRsc cmdlet:

Enable-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet"

To enable RSC across both IPv4 and IPv6 explicitly:

Enable-NetAdapterRsc -Name "Ethernet" -IPv4 -IPv6

If the adapter hardware supports RSC, the operational state transitions to True immediately without requiring an interface restart or system reboot.

Configuring RSC on Hyper-V Virtual Switches

If you run Hyper-V virtual machines or Docker containers on Windows 11, the virtual switch can perform software RSC to optimise internal traffic routing between the host OS and virtual machines. You can inspect virtual switch RSC settings using Get-VMSwitch:

Get-VMSwitch | Select-Object Name, SoftwareRscEnabled

To disable software RSC on a specific Hyper-V virtual switch (for instance, to eliminate latency spikes or packet drops in guest VMs):

Set-VMSwitch -Name "Default Switch" -EnableSoftwareRsc $false

To re-enable software RSC on the virtual switch:

Set-VMSwitch -Name "Default Switch" -EnableSoftwareRsc $true

Auditing RSC Hardware Offload Properties

To inspect advanced driver-level properties and offload parameters supported by the physical NIC, run Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty filtered for coalescing:

Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name "Ethernet" | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -match "Coalescing|RSC" }

This displays vendor-specific driver keys (such as Intel or Realtek RSC settings) and confirms that hardware packet merging is active at the lowest driver tier.