Something much simpler to try may be the following:
Set your WiFi connection to your fastest WiFi to 'connect automatically',  and the connection to your slower WiFi to 'not connect automatically'. Windows will now not so easily switch between WiFi setups any more. Whenever the fast one is available Windows will switch automagically, yet won't switch back to your slow connection.

-Shades (March 04, 2022, 05:06 PM)

Yeah, I've tried that for a while, but that results in Windows being offline whenever the fast WiFi is not available, and I don't want having to manually interfere anymore. :)

Yes and yes.

-brotherS (March 03, 2022, 04:41 PM)

• Is this scenario something you can simulate or force to happen?  That is, do you have control of whether the fast network stays or goes away?
• Are you free for some prototype testing tomorrow?  I'm on Central Time in the U.S.

-skwire (March 03, 2022, 06:00 PM)

I have control over the network but currently have very little time (I really appreciate your offer!), and there might be a deeper issue... see below.

Maybe try this?  I've used this a lot on a laptop where I constantly had to change network settings.
https://www.netsetman.com/en/freeware

• Free
• Tray Icon
• Switch between network adapters
• Switch between networks
• Wifi Management is even a new feature

Features List
https://www.netsetman.com/en/freeware

-BGM (March 03, 2022, 09:02 PM)

Thank you, never heard of it. I've set it up and saw something weird in NetSetMan's AutoSwitch tab: while the fast SSID was available again - I could connect to it on my phone - NetSetMan didn't see it (while checking every 10 seconds), and thus failed to connect. After a few minutes, I checked the WiFi connections in Windows, and only then did the fast SSID show up there, and in NetSetMan.

Is there a way to make Windows check for available networks more frequently? I didn't see a related Windows option and Google didn't offer anything useful.

Hey, brotherS, been a while.  =]

There are a bunch of ways to do this, depending on how pretty you want it.  The default Windows tray icon shows the currently connected wireless network.  You can easily create a batch file that runs the following command to quickly connect to your fast SSID.

[Select]

netsh wlan connect <FAST_SSID_NAME_HERE>

Create a shortcut to that batch file in a convenient place and run it whenever you check the tray icon and see that you're on the slower network.

If you want something more like an actual application, sure, I can do that, but I want to see if the quick'n'dirty suggestion above suffices.

-skwire (March 03, 2022, 02:17 PM)

Hey skwire, been a while indeed! :)

The "whenever you check the tray icon and see that you're on the slower network" thing is what I want to prevent.  8)  The perfect solution would be an app that would automatically reconnect to the fast connection when possible, just letting me know that it happened, but without me having to do anything.

A less perfect - but still very helpful - solution would just show a tray icon (maybe green for fast and red for slow connection), so I could see with a quick glance which connection is active.