Speed Up DSL

If you want to speed up DSL or cable, or other broadband internet connection, then the best place to start is in Windows’ own settings. Windows wasn’t originally designed to connect to the Internet at all, the settings are quickly hacked-on and unoptimised, and stored in the Windows registry.

Luckily, there’s a program available that tells you what each one of these registry settings does, and allows you to edit them easily. It’s called Dr. TCP and you can download the latest version of it at http://www.dslreports.com/front/drtcp.html — don’t worry about installing; it’s just one .exe file.

1. TCP Receive Window: 64240
2. Window Scaling: No
3. Time Stamping: No
4. Selective ACKs: Yes
5. Dial Up (RAS) MTU: 1400
6. Path MTU discovery: Yes
7. Black Hole Detection: Default
8. Max. Duplicate ACKs: leave this blank
9. TTL: 128
10. MTU: 1500

Please note that these are only suggested settings, the ones that users of dslreports.com find work best for their connections. Your connection might be a bit different, you may get better results using different settings.

Don’t be afraid to experiment — you can’t mess anything up! Just remember to reboot your computer each time you change the settings so that you can see the effects. Another method and the one I use is one of the software programs available. Don’t be satisfied with where your online access speed it at. You can increase the speed of your DSL or cable modem connection. It just takes a few tweaks.