Tutorial: Max your download speed.

[Dement]

I've seen many guides for people using Windows XP Pro/Business but I've never seen someone that made a guide for this in Windows XP Home.

DO NOT do this guide if your computer is part for a network (your in a college, etc) some of the protocols will be used by system admins of business networks. Plus if your not a administrator I'm fairly certain you cannot delete these anyway.

DO this guide if your on a personal computer with Windows XP Home. (XP Pro users can follow this guide for the same tweak: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=d42mf9gwqw4)

Little tidbit of info... I have been doing this tweak for about a year now and because of it I can easily hit very close to my connections cap.

Windows puts multiple protocols into your Ethernet connection more then just TCP/IP. These protocols reduce your speed and while the Packet Scheduler is the main reason for the speed loss the other items are never used by a standard PC anyway so there is no reason to keep them around.

The tweak:
1. Start > Control Panel
2. Network Connections
3. Locate your High Speed Internet line. If you have multiple icon's and your not sure which one is your internet right click and hit disable on one then try surfing the internet. If you cannot surf the internet that is the correct icon.
4. Right Click your internet line and go to Properties.
5. There should be 4 items in the box. Client for Microsoft Windows, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Windows, QoS Packet Scheduler, and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
6. Uninstall all items except TCP/IP

You should see a 20% increase in internet download speed and will always have your full line accessible for downloading.

If you don't know what your download cap is then you can use this easy formula to find your theoretical best download speed. Normally after I tweak my connection I get within 20-25kB/s of my cap (~600kB/s for me) all the time remember you can never reach your cap because of other things like overhead, prime time, etc. Without this change my what could be 600kB/s download speed would be capped around 480kB/s.

(Connection speed (MB/s) * 1000) / 8 = Max kB/s

Common broadband speeds:
(3MB/s * 1000) / 8 = 375kB/s
(5MB/s * 1000) / 8 = 625kB/s
(6MB/s * 1000) / 8 = 750kB/s
(10MB/s * 1000) / 8 = 1250kB/s

Cheers.

Note: There is a huge difference in kb/s and kB/s! There are 8 bits(b) in 1 byte(B). Broadband speed tests usually give you kilobit speed but most downloading programs will give you kilobyte speed. This is a commonly missed point and is a advertising mechanism used by internet providers to confuse consumers.

[Dex Luther]

Originally Posted by Dement

This is a commonly missed point and is a advertising mechanism used by internet providers to confuse consumers.

This is off topic, but wouldn't intentionally misleading or confusing consumers be illegal in most countries? Not that it would stop anyone from doing it, but still.

More on topic though: I was wondering in the event I'd have to reinstall these items, how would go about doing it? It's probably not all that difficult, but it might be a good idea to post it anyways. In case people run/get into trouble. :)

[Cerium]

Originally Posted by Dex Luther

This is off topic, but wouldn't intentionally misleading or confusing consumers be illegal in most countries? Not that it would stop anyone from doing it, but still.

They are both valid units. Its like inches being written as '' and feet as '. I don't think its really intentional, since anyone who is selling a product is going to use a smaller unit to make numbers larger.

[GDot]

I work for tech support for an ISP...nobody's intentionally trying to "mislead" anyone. They are both just different units, as Cerium noted. It's industry standard to use bits/sec when talking about bandwidth.

[Dement]

Originally Posted by Dex Luther

I was wondering in the event I'd have to reinstall these items, how would go about doing it? It's probably not all that difficult, but it might be a good idea to post it anyways. In case people run/get into trouble. :)

You can simply go back to your internet line and hit the install button. Once you hit the install button click add on service. Once you hit add you will see the QoS Packet Scheduler and File/Printer sharing from there you can reinstall these items. The last item is under client.

If for some odd reason those items are not there you can also created a whole new connection using the Create a New Connection Wizard.

Edit: There is also a third way to get your connection back that I forgot to mention. Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager > Go to Network adapters > Uninstall your broke one > Right Click Network Adapters > Scan for Hardware changes. That will give you a brand new connection if for some reason you break it so bad... though I think that would be really unlikely.

Originally Posted by Cerium

They are both valid units. Its like inches being written as '' and feet as '. I don't think its really intentional, since anyone who is selling a product is going to use a smaller unit to make numbers larger.

And no ISP's don't do this on purpose... bits are a valid measurement for bandwith and are more detailed too (good for speed testing). However it seems many novice users confuse the two very easily. I get questions all the time where people say stuff like, "Why is it when I do a speed test I get 2950 kb/s and then when I download stuff I'm only getting 369 kb/s!?" and then I have to tell them the difference of a bit and byte.

[MightyMark]

Thanks for the advice!

Im going to check this out..

[Eriol]

Some people say this won't affect Internet downloads, but I guess there's no harm in trying it. :)

As for bits and bytes, it surely is something that confuses the avarage customer, and isn't exactly customer friendly way of expressing the speed of an internet connection since most downloads are measured in MB/s and KB/s. It's a de facto standard for ISPs only because it wouldn't be wise to use KB/s if someone else used Kb/s, people would think the KB/s using were slower connections. This is just one of many many things in e-commerce that are ultimately misleading unaware customers to think the product is better than it actually is. Nothing new under the sun, it's been done since the dawn of trade.

[Gallarn]

I've done the whole tutorial as you posted Dement.Tried it on mine and a friend's computer and while his seem to get better,i didnt get any better results.And a question,hows this work on Vista?is there any other things to do or is it the same deal.And yeah i saw your post says it about "XP".

[Bateau]

mmm if you use torrent programs i would leave QoS installed. i realized a few of them stopped working once QoS was uninstalled, most notably Azureus.

[Dement]

Originally Posted by Gallarn

I've done the whole tutorial as you posted Dement.Tried it on mine and a friend's computer and while his seem to get better,i didnt get any better results.And a question,hows this work on Vista?is there any other things to do or is it the same deal.And yeah i saw your post says it about "XP".

Yes this can be done in Vista.

* Click Start > Control Panel
* Click Network and Internet > Networking and Sharing Center
* On the left side pane click Manage network connections
* Right click on your NIC and then select Properties
* De-select/Uninstall IPv6 and QoS and then click Ok

Originally Posted by Bateau

mmm if you use torrent programs i would leave QoS installed. i realized a few of them stopped working once QoS was uninstalled, most notably Azureus.

uTorrent remained functional for me with increased performance (on well seeded torrents) for long before I posted this thread. I've had no need to test other BT clients so if they became nonfunctional I apologize. Do you know of other clients that suffer from this problem?