How to optimize your broadband - A guide

WyverexAuctor

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Well as a new member to this forum I thought it might be prudent of me to contribute to the community that exists here, therefore I have written this little guide to help everyone attain download and upload speeds at what they should be!

PREAMBLE
Many people these days don't get anywhere near the download speeds that the I.S.P says they provide, for example you may have a 10mbps (megabits per second) connection and the best you can get out of it is around about 6mbps.

Well it might be surprising for most of you but it's actually not always your internet providers fault that speeds are so slow, as not too many people know - Windows XP's built-in networking settings are very inefficient as they are generic and meant for all internet connections (not your specific connection)!

However there are ways to tweak your connection into running at close to if not at your maximum possible download speed!

First might I recommend that you visit SpeedTest and test your connection to test your current speed.

CableNut optimiser
First of all I recommend that you download CableNut. Cablenut is a program that tweaks the internet settings of your computer by modifying the registry you can get it here:
http://www.docsdownloads.com/download/cablenut408.exe

CableNut custom speed files
Second of all you will need one of the attachments I have included with this thread, use whichever corresponds to your connection speed, these are optimisation files which correspond to the speeds i've labelled them as. I made them for virgin Media users but they will work elsewhere as long as the speed corresponds to your own.

Please note that these custom connection speed files WILL work with your ISP as long as the speed is the same as the file's labelled speed.

Feel free to request custom speeds according to your speed tariff and your ISP and I'll be glad to make them for you and add them to this main post! All you need to do is tell me what your download speed is supposed to be, what type of connection it is (ADSL, Cable or Satellite) and I'll see what I can cook up.

How to use CableNut
Using cablenut is very straight forward; all you need to do once you've installed it all and you have the program running is click on " file > open custom ccs file " and open the appropriate file I have attached with this post (if your on virgin media with a 10mbit connection choose that file) and then once it opens in cablenut click on "save to registry"

Thats it!

Reboot your system and enjoy your tweaked speeds!
after you reboot your system I recommend that you visit SpeedTest again and test out your new speed to see if you notice an increase, if you do give yourself a pat on the back and enjoy your nice better speed.

I give credit to Van Burren as I based my config files upon his. VanBuren testmy.net Cablenut settings (04/05/2007)

I hope this is in the right area of the forum, if not could a moderator move it please?

My own results:
 
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I tried this yesterday and ran the speedtest before running it. My speed was greater than 15000, after running it the speed dropped to 9000. Had to do a quick system restore to get my speed back up. I have just done a speedtest trying two different sites and got very different results. The results I got after running the application were both from site1.

Chookey
 
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It's possible it could have, it depends on the connection your using, if you could post what your download and upload speed is I can check... If it doesn't work however you can load cablenut and just choose the "delete cablenut tweaks" option to restore your machine to how it was.

chookey Just to clear something up, you are using XP SP2 right?
Anyway if it drops your speed let me know what connection your supposed to be on and i'll make custom config files for you =)
 
I've yet to see any of these things actually make any improvements and generally one mans settings may not be the best option for another.

I'm sure that most people who use your preconfigured settings will end up with a slower speed, I'll follow your guide and post the results.
 
Your configs have murdered my speed mate.

Virgin 20mb, was getting more or less full speed before i ran cablenut and your config, then it dropped to roughly 4mbps.

I've removed the settings and it has returned to normal operation.
 
I've updated the 20mbit configuration; it should run a lot better now though it may not.

Anyway sorry to hear the configs don't work well for you mate, just trying to help people out is all =)
 
I'll try again, cheers :)

UPDATE:

Your 20mb config made a big difference mate, lol

Thanks :) :)
 
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Awesome, I think I know where I went wrong with those custom files, it's just something to do with the maths I was using ;)
 
well it worked a treat on my newgroups speeds was havin problems and all sorted now cheers
 
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Can you do a configuration for 7008/448 Kbps on Xp prof Sp2?

MTU = 1500

cheers.
 
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made a slight increase on my down speed but big difference to newsgroups.
 
Here you go hamba, hope this one helps.



Thank you WyverexAuctor!

It has increased the D/L speed a bit. :)

It's very interesting that when I did the first speedtest using the new configuration the results were very high - for me, around 6000kbps.

Then it settled back to be around the 5000kbps mark - which is a bit more than usual. I usually get between 4600kbps.and 4900kbps.
 
seems to have increased slightly mate thanks will keep an eye on it i will make this thread a sticky
 
i done the speed test five time before the changes and five times after. the downspeed has gone up by 178.4 (average) but the upspeed has gone down by 26.2 (average). still getting the same speed when downloading from newsgroups (240 kb/s on a 2 mb connection from virgin media) why has this not improved?
 
Chances are it's your upload speed its probably supposed to be higher than the config file I made for it, if you can tell me the speed 2meg is supposed to upload I can tweak it more specifically for you.
 
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To be honest mate ive no idea. But its the virgin media 2 meg if thats any help
 
i done the speed test five time before the changes and five times after. the downspeed has gone up by 178.4 (average) but the upspeed has gone down by 26.2 (average). still getting the same speed when downloading from newsgroups (240 kb/s on a 2 mb connection from virgin media) why has this not improved?
hi m8 thats just about the right speed u will get on a 2mb connecton u only can get up to 256kb so ur just off by 16kb which is very close to maxing out ur download speed so in theory u do get ur full download speed
 
Great thread. Would love to give it a try but am using Vista Ultimate. Has anyone, tested or even tried, this on Vista. The cablenut site only seems to test as for as XP.
 
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