Tweaks for an optimal surfing experience

Ok, so how many of you have taken a broadband connection and curse your ISP that it isnt delivering the kbps it promised ?

Did you know that our OS and even the browsers are optimized for Dial-up connections by default ?

Here are some tweaks that will make your broadband experience worthwhile .. some will make pages load lightning fast. Just tweak around with em till all goes fine , all right ?
Nevertheless to say, Windows itself isn’t configured aptly for Broadband.

1) Tweaking the Windows TCP Stack Settings
This step is for advanced users and it is quite OK if you skip this and goto step 2 😀 as this produces only a small improvement in speed. Alternatively, you can use some 3rd party software which will let you know if your TCP settings are configured for broadband. (E.g : Tune Up Utilities System Optimizer )

Tweaking your TCP Stack

I suggest you run the tweak test (JAVA required) from dslreports, which will recommend you with just the right values to be tweaked.
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks : Run the Tweak Tester II

Next, download DrTCP and tweak your settings for the LAN card (MTU,TCP Receive Window size). Disable and Enable Networking (XP) or reboot the PC (95/98) for the changes to take place. If you are having ANY trouble getting back online, restore the default values and repeat the procedure.

2 ) Tweaking the Browsers’ Settings

• Internet Explorer performance is greatly dependent in part on the number of simultaneous connections that can be made for a current page. By default, the value is 4. This means only a maximum of 4 simultaneous connectons will be made per server.

Start – Run – Regedit
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
Name: MaxConnectionsPerServer
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 20 (Hex)
Name: MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 20

If these keys dont already exist, create them.

• Firefox

Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down (or press n) and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
network.http.proxy.pipelining

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true” [Double click on the row]

Also, set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make a max.of 30 requests at once.

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Finally, find “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time (ms) the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

Here’s the video explaining step 2

3) AdBlock (Firefox)
The ‘add-ons’ in Firefox is a boon to users. That is one great advantage of open software.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/

Install the add-on and restart firefox. Now right click on those annoying ads and click “Adblock Image” or “Adblock iFrame” etc to begin the mojo.
Dont forget to add the wildcard “*” for annoying ad sites ..
Eg : Instead of blocking http://adultfinder.com/promoads/?clkid=87JHDI7J349torrettz.com, add http://adultfinder.com/* to the filter ..

And … here’s the picture of my rate of success ..

These are the screenshots (of the maximums i got) before and after the tweak

Oops ! Almost forgot .. If you’d like to do some bandwidth testing, try
http://www.speedtest.net/ – Great bandwidth test ( Flash 8 ) .. Host of server locations from around the world to choose from.
For a quick test with just a 128KB data block, try our BSNL’s test or McAfee Speedometer
Happy Surfing

cheers