In those cases, there will be no speed increase over direct download through a browser. Not all sites allow multiple connections.In the screenshot below, the Low setting allows up to 15 simultaneous connections to one site, five connections each to three sites, or any other combination up to the total of 15 connections.

You may reconsider and try a third-party download manager, such as Free Download Manager (FDM). There might even be a browser with such a manger built into it, but, again, that's a third-party app. There are add-on application managers, some installed as extensions to a browser, but they are all third-party tools. Microsoft Edge and IE do not offer multiple connections for a single download, though you can try this MS fix to increase number of downloads, as opposed to connections. You state specifically 'without the use of third-party applications'. The speed increase you observed is likely because you've opened a second download thread, not because you're getting throughput over Ethernet (which should be the maximum speed of the router) and WiFi (which may be slower, particularly far from the router). Where there is throttling on the server side, it may be possible to increase download speed by opening additional connections. I would like to know if there is any way to stop Windows from doing this - without the use of third-party applications - to allow me to use both connections simultaneously, or if it's just a weird thing that Steam does.Įdit: It turns out that it's not just steam that does this thing with the internet Nvidia GeForce Experience and some other apps manage to sustain a connection over ethernet and WiFi at the same time, but when the download is complete, Windows (I guess) turns off WiFi connectivity and defaults to ethernet.

However, as soon as the Steam operation has completed, Windows (I believe) defaults back to only using my ethernet connection and disables the wifi. This allows me to utilise both my wifi connection and my ethernet connection (to the same router) at the same time. I have noticed recently that during downloading or updating games in my Steam library, I can somehow manage to double the speed at which this occurs by unplugging my ethernet cable, waiting a few seconds, and then plugging it back in again.

Wifi and ethernet same time