Maximising Your Connexion

[donna]

well im a real dunderhead when it comes to puters, but i did your fix and i now seem to be getting a much better speed!

thanks!

[mac.wheeler]

Whilst this isn't a complete myth, it is one of the most often mis-represented XP tweaks around.

It will not give you 20% of your bandwidth back full stop and you will seldom see any significant improvement in the speed of your internet connection. Although I agree it can give some gains in theory depending upon your particular software usage. Full technical explanation below:

When a QoS-aware program is in use it will reserve the allocated amount of bandwidth and it take away from other non QoS-aware programs. However, once the QoS-aware application is closed or closes the network connection, the bandwidth reservation is released. This is done by a series of PATH and RESV refresh messages sent back and fourth over the connection. These programs that are not Qos-aware have to fight for bandwidth because unlike the QoS API, there is no bandwidth reservation.

Therefore, you may only notice an increase in speed if you are running QoS-aware programs. For more information regarding the QoS, try these MS KBs.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q233 203

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q244 910

No criticism of the original poster for trying to help out, it's a very confusing thing is QoS, although not totally a red herring, this tweak is not going to perform miracles.

For those of you suffering from a slow connection which makes your browsing a pain in the neck may I recommend one of the proxy services such as propel accelerator (www.propel.com) which I have had great success with over GPRS in Thailand.