Learn how to Tweak your broadband connection

[deakie]

now most of you will latch unto a server and use their speed test...this will give you a test to that particular server and lots of testers walk away convinced thats the speed they have....

thing is, thats the speed you have to one locality...
determining true speed of your connection can only be done at your own isp....thats the speed you have from your house to your isp servers....from there, the variances of the internet takes over and you really have no way of asessing just how fast you are really surfing...

there are a couple of very important factors that can get in your way...
router faults....sometimes, gateways are not behaving when you escape your own home and they might be dropping packets...
sometimes your isp equipment might be adding latency because of multiple users being on at the same time..
sometimes its your setup thats buggering things up too....

so you need to test a couple of things....
one is tracerouting....look for packet loss to several difeent sites and ensure that it isnt the first three hops thats letting you down...if it is...phone your isp....find out whats happening, especially if you see real latency or dropped packets....

do some file downloading and uploading to see how good you compare with the advertised speeds..

next, use the tool mentioned below to do a nice speed test on multiple servers...this ought to show performance for worldwide if you do the comprehensive test...
and it will generally cover the things above...except the gateway packet checking.....

it will be nice to show up the different users on the same service and then you can really compare...

post your results in here...

go here and get the proggy from the download section....
http://www.broadbandspeedtest.net/

[deakie]

now for the tweaking....
first the background....

you are connected to a telco that has a card located in a kit called dslam.
from there, the telco handles your data traffic and passes it to your isp's servers or routers....
all the action is maintained by the telco...so the telco's data handling info is important to you...
your isp will set your kb rate or top speed.....they implement the throttles basically and such stuff......

one of these piece of info is the mtu or maximum transmision unit....
its the size of the packet before its broken into more than one piece....
if you are playing a game, you dont want small pieces of info being broken into two...you want it in one for response...like that left turn you buss on an opponent to zap him...
now most telco's will have an mtu of around 1500 max but here in the uk we found by testing that it was more like 1450...and it took a while before BT admitted it was 1458..
most routers you buy comes with 1500 as default...also, i think windows does the same.....by experimenting with your mtu, you can find the best for you.....
we'll discuss how at the end.
*the best dialup mtu is 576.......

next thing is the TCP recieve window....this is the actual data your comp is willing to handle as one data packet so to speak.....
think of it as a block of info you are going to recieve...
this is similar to your mtu in that your comp will address that data in one go and the size of it is what will be addressed....
the bigger it is, the better for downloading until you reach a critical point and then it becomes two blocks...and the usual happens with breaking up and waiting...
the smaller it is is better for gaming....you dont want big info to get to you and you have to wait before your screen gets updated.....see me?
its another one for experimenting with.....
there are some general default reccomendation, which i will find for ya, but for now we are going through how this stuff actually works and how you yourself can optimise your own comp....

next one is the time to live or TTL as its known.....this is the one where you send and how long you should wait for a reply or acknowledge from the other end.....
there is also an ACK setting which is basically how many ack should you wait for before iving up totally....
i set mine at 128 in agreement with other people i know but others have claimed good results at other values...

now the tool to use for the above stuff is dr.tcp....this is a windows tool.....im sure that there is a way that the linux buds can set these things but im not familiar with them to be honest....
but all that wont matter with the page that i direct you to....it can handle all as its using java....
the tweak page will suggest values from which you can start....

for all users...the following is important...

use this tweak test page to first determine your what you settings should be.....its a good place to start tweaking from......
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

continued......

[deakie]

now we get to business....
you will see from the tweak page that you just run the java utlity and it will come to some conclusion as whats best for you.....
though basically designed for the american isp's, it has served us well all the way in euro land too and so should serve you guys in the carib even better...

but they are just starting points for you....
dr.tcp is the tool you will need to use to sharpen the figures....and it will take time too as each change represents a reboot....

word of advice....mostly, we do these things during the day....always do a check at night to see how well things look when its quiet.....because if you do it when its really bad (during the day) then at night it should woooosh.... if it hasnt, then play again or start suspecting that something is wrong....

grab the dr. tcp here...get the latest...
http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp
i will work on the linux issue after i'm done here.....promise...


now lets have a look at this page....
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

it shows a table about midway and this is a very useful tble....
also, there is a better technical explanation of the settings i spoke about here....
however, if you are running xp, treat it as 2k....its the same belly it have......
the treatment on rwin shows that its a very important setting and will optimise either the downloading of files or the playing of games....
its a trade off i'm afraid to say...you cant have both unless you place yourself in the middle of no mans land.....
so you choose.....

determining mtu....
microsoft has a edge on how to discover it in this article...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q159211/
its by doing pings with a value and watching the ping result time.....very clever and quick.....no reboot necc as you test for the best case....

only do one at a time...optimise one first, then the other...i would reccomend doing mtu first and then rwin....set ACK to 1....and try with TTL at 128...some use 256 but i cannot see why anyone should wait that long....

there is enough there to start and im off ti research the linux guru's problems.....

[Arch_Angel]

This is a great tool. If anyone needs help using this tool and tweaking thier broadband to get faster speeds, please post in following thread: Get help tweaking your broadband connection

Thanks

[Mr. Unstoppable]

Deakie this all seems like rocket science. LOL Thanks i will look at it later i only have 128 kbs and want every single bit of it i can get. Hopefully i can understand stuff later and get it to work.

If not i am coming back in here to bother you.

[crosses]

Just so you know, I havent read the thread but I see the tool you advertising and I believe there are quite a few other s that do the same includint Tuneup Utilities. But i'll bookmark this thead for future refrence cuz flow isnt in Mobay yet and its like 4am now.
Good looking out guy.
AM OUT!!!

[hv_thugg]

great work loving it

[badasromain]

Hmm, Like The Broadband Test. Going To Try Tweaking Later.

[Xplicit]

now logically it is impossible for any software to go about ISP speed cap........ WTF... really think about it............. LOL newbs

[v620]

yall are talkin crap u cant get more than wat u pay for son