At my office we have a 5G WiFi that is faster and more reliable than the locally provided internet service that we have set up to our server.
Is there any way to remain connected to the Ethernet/Network/Server in order for printers and network drives to operate but use WiFi to get internet access?
Windows 10 workstations.
Yes. Assuming the devices on the internal wired network share the same network address and that the network address on the Wi-Fi network is different, simply remove the gateway address from the tcp/ip configuration on the wired network interface.
Windows already knows how to route packets to the proper destination. But if you have more than one default gateway (I.e. on the wired interface and the Wi-Fi interface) then Windows will choose (somewhat arbitrarily) what the best internet connection to use is and that will often be that the wired network is preferred over the wireless network.
Removing the default gateway (either with a static IP config on each computer) or via the DHCP configuration on the network to affect all computers, will cause windows to route internet traffic through the Wi-Fi network (using the default gateway) but still send local traffic over the wired network.
Now, if for some strange reason both your wired and wireless networks are using the same network address space then you would need to change the metrics of your network interfaces or play with the routing table to force windows to prioritize one interface over another and direct traffic over specific interfaces. But, I’m not sure how the latter would be the case, in this scenario.
Here is the solution which fixed my issue:
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/09/how-to-change-network-adapter-priorities-on-windows-11/
