Faster Windows Vista Networking

[kazuya]

This is for all us pretty few people that are using Vista and having slow connection.:digo:


It’s useful to know that Vista added support for IPv6, improved network protocols for faster detection and transfer. In theory this should take Internet connection to the next level, but in practice it slows down not only connection, yet whole system.
So, this could be reason why your connection in Vista is slowed down.
You can perform these 5 steps to improve your connection speed:

1) Turn Off Unnecessary Network Protocols - Turn off unnecessary protocols such as IPv6, Qos Packet Scheduler, File and Printer Sharing or Link-Layer Topology.


2) Use Static IP - Try to use static IP, assign an IP to your computer, don't rely on DHCP server to assign IP for you


3) Use OpenDNS - Replace your ISP DNS server with OpenDNS, or any faster DNS server.
To do that do following:

1. Go to Control Panel -> Network or Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Manage Network Connections
2. Select and highlight the connection
3. Right click and select Properties
4. Uncheck any unwanted protocol
5. Highlight IPv4 and select Properties
6. Set the IP address and DNS server accordingly
7. Use 208.67.220.220, 208.67.222.222 for OpenDNS server


4) Increase local DNS cache - Vista captures every DNS records you access, so increasing the cache size will minimize the needs to query
To do that:

1. Go to Registry
2. Choose HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSet Services DnscacheParameters
3. Create or change the value below, all in hexadecimal:


CacheHashTableBucketSize = 1
CacheHashTableSize = 180
MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit = ff00
MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit = 12d


5) Turn off TCP Auto Tuning - This might be the major reason for slow connection. Try to disable it or other settings.
You need to manually configure TCP settings if you disable this function.

Use this commands:

"netsh interface set global autotuning=disable" to turn off Auto Tuning
"netsh interface set global autotuning=normal" to turn it back on

Enjoy faster networking:eclipsee_steering:

[vDD+wR]

hey kazuya,

have you tried the tweaks from 3 to 5 already? does it make a big difference when taking these steps?

greetz

[anon]

@vDD: I don't have Vista, but I do use OpenDNS's servers (step 3) for my connection instead of my ISP's, and names resolve faster. :top:
They also are never down :biggrin:


2) Use Static IP - Try to use static IP, assign an IP to your computer, don't rely on DHCP server to assign IP for you

I wouldn't do that with a direct connection...

[Aurion]

I wouldn't do that with a direct connection...

Well,nah it's useful especially when you are using a modem & not a router since the modem already changes IP on every restart or disable/enable connection !! So it might be good for fast caching to obtain extra lost bandwith

[anon]

Well, in that case doing it will make your connection faster, as your modem will ask for an IP as soon as it's turned on, and not when your PC is :smile: (these modems which also are routers or reversed :biggrin:)

But some don't work this way, so I posted that just as a small tip just in case someone follow's kazuya's tips, then his connection doesn't work because of this; but he sees my post and turns DHCP back on :wink:

[Aurion]

Well, in that case doing it will make your connection faster, as your modem will ask for an IP as soon as it's turned on, and not when your PC is :smile: (these modems which also are routers or reversed :biggrin:)

hmm,you words are true but most modems,at least,usuall ones such as D-Link just gets a new IP in both ways if the PC restarted or if you restarted the modem/reenabled connection

[anon]

Then my WebStar is already obsolete :redface:

[Aurion]

LOL maybe :biggrin: anyway,take it easy,we are just clearing doubts

[anon]

Well, it is, but it works fine :wink:
And the smiley in my previous post was addressed at myself :tongue:

[kazuya]

hey kazuya,

have you tried the tweaks from 3 to 5 already? does it make a big difference when taking these steps?

greetz

Its faster.i have all that tweaks and its much better.things are always faster if you disable some components that you dont need.they stand just in way.Here you have some explanations

OpenDns


When you type an address like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) in your browser address bar, the computer doesn’t know where yahoo.com points to and it will therefore ask the DNS server.

The job of a DNS server is to translate this human-readable web address (like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)) into a computer-readable number also known as an IP address (209.131.36.158). Once your computer knows the IP location of a web domain name, it opens the website in your browser.

DNS is such an integral part of our Internet life working behind the scenes every time we connect to a website. In most situations, our Internet Service Provider specifies the DNS Server address that we key into the browser network settings or the router.

Unfortunately, this can prove to be the weakest link in the entire workflow. For example, if the DNS server of your ISP is slow, the time it takes to resolve the web address adds up to the overall loading time of the website.

To solve this problem, we look at a simple and reliable service called OpenDNS that speeds up your Internet connection and also handles some other very important issues. There are no software to install, it’s very easy to set up and the price is just right - $0.

opendns-ip-address

To use OpenDNS, all you have to do is open your Network Connections or Router’s settings page and update the default DNS server to point to the OpenDNS nameservers that are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

The whole process takes a few seconds but with this single step alone, you just made your computer safer and increased the overall browsing speed. Here’s why:

Unlike the DNS servers of your less reliable ISP, OpenDNS servers store the IP addresses of millions of websites in their cache so it would take less time to resolve your requests. So if you have asked for an IP address of a website that has been previously requested by another OpenDNS user, you will get the reply instantly.

TCP Auto Tuning



When Windows Vista is connected to high speed broadband Internet connection, there may be some incompatibilities and conflict problem or error such as the following:

* Poor intermittent network performance.
* Slow network loading.
* Unable to open and load some websites or webpages using Internet Explorer or Firefox, where the blue loading bar keeps running for a long time, but the pages fail to load.
* Java applets fail to download and open.
* Cannot receive email or download from POP3 mail server by email clients such as Thunderbird. No mail arrived although users may see the message “receiving 1 of 3 messages”, and eventually the receiving process will time out with the error number 0×800CCC19 timeout.
* Slow email sending or retrieval using Thunderbird and other clients.

The symptoms exist due to the new re-written TCP stack in Windows Vista that aims to take full advantage of hardware advances such as gigabit networking. Among the new feature in Windows Vista TCP/IP is Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level for TCP connections. TCP AutoTuning enables TCP window scaling by default and automatically tunes the TCP receive window size for each individual connection based on the bandwidth delay product (BDP) and the rate at which the application reads data from the connection, and no longer need to manually change TcpWindowSize registry key value which applies to all connection. Theoretically, with TCP auto-tuning, network connection throughput in Windows Vista should be improved for best performance and efficiency, without registry tweak or hack. However, this is not always the case, and may cause some Internet related issues and problems.



tcp auto tuning is automatically disabled if you use hack to patch tcpip max connections