Talktalk broadband MTU settings

talk3

We have had Talktalk broadband for about a month now (our first broadband!), the speed is great, but we cannot use e-mail or the college's remote access site. After many frustrating calls to their 1st line technical support, we were told that our MTU settings (anyone know what these are?!)were too high and needed to be reset.
My question is (being as we can't get through to their second line support for them to change them) is this something we can change ourselves via the computer or router (Apple I Mac 2.0 and Hewiaw?? wireless router) or is this something the provider has to change from their end?

Any suggestions gratefully recieved.....

Red_Rose_Exile

MTU are maximum transmission units

1492 is what most ISPs use, though AOL uses 1450 and some others do too. Do not set it to lower than 1400 and make sure your router if you use one is not higher than that of your PC

Personally I use Cable Nut to tweak my network connections, available from here and a tutorial I did for it back in 2005( but still valid) here

cowbutt

MTU settings are done at your end. More info on what MTU means can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_transmission_unit. http://talktalkhell.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/change-mtu-to-help-settings/ seems to document that it needs to be reduced from the default of 1500 to 1400 for TalkTalk. Theoretically, you could just change it on your router and be done, but it might be easiest to change it on all your computers instead. http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp should help for Windows machines, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303192 for MacOS X machines.

Robin_T_Cox

The Speedguide.net TCP/IP Analyzer will give you a recommended setting for your own equipment so as to maximise your router configuration.

http://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php

esuhl

Red_Rose_Exile wrote: »

(An MTU of) 1492 is what most ISPs use, though AOL uses 1450 and some others do too.

I though that in the UK it should be1458 for ADSL broadband and 1500 for cable...

espresso

esuhl wrote: »

I though that in the UK it should be1458 for ADSL broadband and 1500 for cable...

TalkTalk recommend that the MTU be set to 1432.

talk3

Thanks to everyone for their help and expertise, I will try and get on with it when I get back from typing this in the library!!!

esuhl

The following link points to a page that suggests optimum MTU settings for TalkTalk users:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=talktalk&Number=2699244&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart

chunter

Didn't talk talk used to have network problems with any MTU over 1400 a year ago.
Miracles can happen - maybe they fixed it.

Red_Rose_Exile

yes, but that I have a feeling that was when they were throttling bandwidth by lowering the MTU because they couldn't cope with high demand

TalkTalk

Hello,

I hope that you have managed to change your MTU and your issues is fully resolved however if not please try changing your MTU to either 1400 or 1350 as we have found this to help some customers who are experiencing similar issues to yourself.
If you would like instructions on how to do this for your router/modem please let me know.

Thank you