Ethernet and wireless on the local network

Question

I have a computer connected to the local network (which in turn is connected to the internet) both via ethernet and wireless on Windows. I wondered what happened to the data transiting to/from the computer in this case.

Does Windows use the fastest interface (ethernet) to send all data or does it choose "randomly" (for instance, first connection established), or does it split between the two interfaces ?

Answer 1

Windows should be picking the route with the least "cost" - this is a combination of the number of hops (both 1 in this case) and the lowest "metric" (the Ethernet connection).

Every connection in a network has a metric value associated with it. This is a mark of how fast the connection is - a lower metric means a faster connection. Ethernet defaults to a much lower value than WiFi. The cost of a route is the sum of all the metrics for all the hops in the route.