Tweaking Broadband Speed

[Rogue]

Hi All,
New to the forums here but been lurking around the site and the speed tester for a while now. Full marks to Black Knight for a great site. Anyway I wondered if anyone here had tried or had much success in tweaking their computer settings to achieve faster speeds.

This of course involves modifying registry settings which is not for the faint hearted. There are some apps out there that will do this for you if you are not confident in directly modifying the registry yourself. Some of these are small free programs and relatively easy to use.

However as stated if you are not clear or confident about making these mods to your registry then do not try as this can cause serious problems for your computer.

From my own experience when I first connected to broadband I managed to get quite a reasonable speed increase by resetting some of these values from the Default Windows Values which are often more geared towards Dial up.

Just wondered if anyone else has tried this on their BB setup and got a result.

[howfast]

Hi Rogue

Welcome to the forum

I tried some tweaking a good while ago using the apps from SpeedGuide.net :: Your Guide to Broadband but can't say I noticed any perceptible improvements.

Can you let us all know which apps you used to tweak registry settings and if your still getting the speed increase first obtained.

Howfast

[Rogue]

Hi
Sorry took a bit if time to get back to this. Yes the TCP optimiser from that site seems to be one of the better apps. I have looked at a couple of others that I could not recommend.

The main value to be adjusted for any real effect appears to be the RWIN or TCP receive Window. Other adjustments appear to have little value. The correct value for your own particular setup may require some experimentation depending on the latency of your connection.

Another factor in this is the set up of your Routers MTU value - an example being my Voyager which by default limits the MTU to 1400. This means that any changes to your computer settings for MTU (by using the app or directly modifying the registry) will have no effect as the router is already limiting this value directly.

The recommended MTU value can be up to 1500 depending on what type of connection you have. In my case mine should have been 1492 for a PPOE connection. I was able to reconfigure my router in its own configuration manager and adjust the default value from 1400 to 1492 to allow the new computer settings to take effect.

It is also possible to update to the routers latest firmware version using this configuration manager which may also be a factor especially if you have had your router for a long while.

In my case I got an overall boost in speed from 750kbps to 860kbps on a 1Meg connection. This speed has remained totally consistent ever since.

I am not sure what value these adjustments might have on faster connections e.g. 2 or 3 megs but it seems to me if you are paying for a very fast line there is every reason to ensure your equipment is not the limiting factor in the performance.

Again I would very strongly advise that people do not adjust these values if you are not confident in what you are doing so as to avoid dire consequences. There are a lot of sites out there giving information on this stuff so do your homework first.

Of course we are all subject to crap lines in this country which is undoubtedly the biggest limiting factor of all in any of this and the maximum we can hope for is a 3 meg connection (as far as I am aware). Meanwhile our UK neighbours can get up to 12 megs in places due to the good cabling.

I dont know if all this info is any use to anyone but perhaps it stimulates some thinking about the set up of equipment. It seemed to work for me.