Improving broadband speed?

raz_uk

Hey everyone - I was on the www.pcpitstop.com website and ran a check on my internet speed. It gave me the advice there to improve my connection by editing the registry values in the Tcpip parameters (i think thats what its called).

So I did it - as the advice said it can improve connection speeds if you are on XP and have broadband (DSL). I did make a back-up of my previous registry just in-case.

Haven't seen vast improvements to be honest although I think it may have gone up by about 20kb/sec but that's just a guess.

Just need an expert opinion if it was wise what I did, or should I just restore my old registry back?

thanks

Red_Rose_Exile

If you aren't comfortable in the registry, it is sometimes best left alone.

However, Xp default values are notoriously awful when it comes to TCP/IP parameters.

20kb isn't bad, when all things considered, but sometimes all the effects don't take place until a reboot.

There are few other things that can increase your browsing speeds, but again requires a few tweaks of the registry.

However, there are several programs which will do it for you, and one that is well established free and easy to use is cablenut, then follow the tutorial here

It may just may make a big difference

raz_uk

im really not tech savvy at all - but it seems 20kb is just an estimation - just find it risky tweaking registry values when im not a tech expert. There is no long term risk by changing the registry values is there?

Red_Rose_Exile

No, I would recommend that you do a system restore point before you try anything drastic though

raz_uk

Yeh, I made a system restore point last night before I even touched the registry. I will try using cablenut as you advised and see if it helps. If it doesn't make a difference, Ill just revert back to the system restore point.
thanks for the advice

raz_uk

OK ive done the cablenut calculation now - how can I check if the tweaking has truly worked?

fermi

Just tried that test at https://www.pcpitstop.com and got 3,041 kbps :eek: while the London server at https://www.speedtest.net gives me 13,465 kbps.

The second figure is representative of the speed I get for large sustained download from a fast ftp server, so the pcpitstop test is massively under-reporting for me (at least from this location).

For you it may be fine, but if a limiting factor is either the 'test' itself or network traffic between you and the server then no amount of tweaking will help.

raz_uk

Hmm ok im on a 2mb broadband connection,

before I did the tweaking, pcpitstop was giving me: 169kilobits per second

post-tweaking pcpitstop gave me: 459kilobits per second


before tweaking speedtest.net gave me: 1356kb/second

speedtest.net now gives me: 1972kb/second which is nearly hitting the desired 2mb that my connection offers (this is at peak time which is very promising as traffic is usually high at this time)

So I guess that means tweaking has helped me get closer to the potential my connection can do.

What do you think from these results?

spakkker

There's a free prog. called tcpoptimiser which will do it for you.

fermi

On a 2 Mbps line/connection you would under the very best conditions expect to lose a % of the speed simply due to connection overheads.

A repeatable test at 1972 kbps or thereabouts would seem to be very reasonable.

Red_Rose_Exile

On a 2 Mbps line/connection you would under the very best conditions expect to lose a % of the speed simply due to connection overheads.

and I am in agreement with fermi, traffic overhead has to taken into consideration along with the contention ratio. You would never achieve the true 2Mb. The route that your packets get sent will also affect the reading

and you have achieved a 45% speed increase which really isn't that bad!