Prefer IPv4 over IPv6 on Windows 11

While IPv6 is finally being deployed by most ISPs, many of them still provide a much better IPv4 peering, resulting in slower downloads when using IPv6. When an ISP does not yet offer native IPv6 connectivity, some users may have deployed IPv6 tunnel broker services on their routers. Windows 10/11 uses IPv6 by default, so any download from a dual-stack connected server would abuse the tunnel broker's bandwidth. To avoid this, Windows should be configured to prefer IPv4 over IPv6. Unfortunately Windows 11 doesn't have such an option built-in, and furthermore Microsoft deleted the hotfixes that would allow to make this change by a single click.

Using the Registry Editor, we configure Windows to prefer IPv4 over IPv6 connectivity. This means, that any dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) connected servers will be reached via IPv4, while IPv6-only sites can still be reached via IPv6.

Open the registry editor regedit.exe as Administrator and go to the following location:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters

Add a D-Word (32-bit) key named DisabledComponents and change the value to 20:

Key: DisabledComponents
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0x20

Reboot to apply this change. To revert this configuration, simply remove the key and reboot again.