How to Speed up your Internet Connection

April 16, 2009 porkchop 2 comments

I have 15Mbps cable, but I’m always looking at ways to increase my speed, anyway I can. As you probably know I game a lot, and also download a lot, so I require a very quick connection. I know there is a lot of people who don’t believe in tweaking your registry and doing other things to try to speed your Internet connection by a little, but I do. I have been going to this website for many years, they have been around for a long time, I even remember using them when Windows 95 was only out at the time, and I did use there tweaks for speed back then. So I fully trust these guys, they know what they are doing. Here is the link, SpeedGuide, http://www.speedguide.net Just a note, Only do this if you are comfortable with going through your registry, I know they carry an automatic Windows Vista patch that applies all there tweaks under Windows Vista but It does not do the Gaming Tweak, because your router has to support it. I use all the Windows Vista tweaks on that page except the gaming tweak, because my router does not support it, I am also running Windows Vista 64bit Ultimate and it worked. I did notice my download speeds go faster. Below I will list the Operating System and page link directly to the tweaks for your convenience.

Windows Vista registry speed tweaks
Here is speed tweaks for Windows Vista, I will not really describe how to install them, because they supply all there instructions, and explain which each one does. I ran through there instructions of each one, then I ran the automatic patch, which they have at the bottom and they both worked good. The automatic patch I would recommend because it has a way of reversing the patch if you run into problems. I also suggest that you do the Gaming Tweak – Disable Nagle’s algorithm, the patch does not do it as I said some routers do not support it so read that section well and see if you can take advantage of that as well. Basically what the tweaks do on that page is improve the way Windows does its connection management, such as TCP/IP and also a few settings. Windows Vista has gotten better than Windows XP in this aspect, and they will get better with each OS, but there are people out there that find these things and notice improvements, then they get published to the public. Here is the link to that page http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=2574 Note that the automatic patch is at the bottom, and is recommended.

Windows XP registry speed tweaks
Windows XP has better speed tweaks, I suggest if you are still running Windows XP, to use them, some of the tweaks are major, such as the TCPWindowSize which will really affect your Internet connection since that optimizes that TCP for a broadband connection, which almost everybody has in North America. Another big one is the Web patch which increases the default number of connections to a website, so you can load that web page faster and surf quicker. They also have a automatic patch that adds these automatically to your registry, no need to mess around in it its at the bottom page, they also have set by step instructions on setting each tweak up if you want to do it manually. Here is the link http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=157

I won’t say anything about Windows 98/2000 It’s been years since I’ve used those OS’s but if you do have them, they also have tweaks for them as well, just look for it Broadband, registry tweaks section on there menu bar.

Here is where they carry a lot of there patches and there famous program, the TCP Optimizer, I remember seeing it on techtv, when techtv was good. Basically the TCP Optimizer is a program that allows you to change every setting with your connection, and reverse it, it also has default profiles from a drop down menu, what you can do is select Cable. or DSL and it will input there recommended values, and then restart, if you are not happy you can revert to default. http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php An interesting thing is that they still host the @home speed patch, I remember that when @home was in business, that was long ago 1998, I wouldn’t recommend that patch. But there is there patches, read them carefully before applying them, don’t apply the wrong patch.

FireFox & Internet Explorer speed tweaks
Here are some speed tweaks for Internet Explorer and FireFox, I have not used them, because my web browser is quick enough for me, but here they are anyways, http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=2448 From reading the comments on the page they seem to work, and they also suggest to only run these if you have broadband. Another thing I should mention since we are talking about browsers, is that if you are using Internet Explorer, I suggest you use FireFox, it is a much better web browser and a lot faster than Internet Explorer, secure, and it’s free get it here http://www.firefox.com

Well those are my recommendations on speeding up your Internet connection, results will vary and I’d like to hear some comments if it has worked for you or if you noticed an improvement in speed. Run this speed test before and after, and see if you notice a difference http://www.speedtest.net/