So do broadband tweaking programs really work in India ?
You cannot deny the fact that there are a lot of programs that claim to revolutionize your speeds . Some fake , some under rated . Some success stories . But then again you wonder - " nah ,probably not in my area / state " . So lets go through a collection of what all we can really do ,what all tools are out there ,find out if they work and analyse the results accordingly.
Before I start ...
Im running on a touctel 256 kbps connection with FIREFOX . and the following steps are those that i followed .Results of contrasting speeds will be shown below .
Cleaning browser cache
Doing this at regular periods of time helps since after weeks spent on the Internet, your Web browser could be stuffed with unncessary temporary files.
For security reasons ,you might not always be happy with the thought of your Firewall accepting ICMP Requests , but heres the reason why it helps as well :
Finding your connection's MTU
Open a command window (in XP, click Start-Run, type cmd and hit ) and then type the command ‘ping www.techenclave.com -f -l 1472’ . If you see the reply “Packet needs to be fragmented but DF setâ€, try lower byte values until this message stops appearing.
Add 28 to the number you used to get the optimum MTU. 1500 (1472+28) is the maximum possible MTU.
For eg: i got mine as 1464 .Which means i then add 28 to that to get my MTU.
And now the goodies
Looking through several such tools i picked up Dr.TCP which has been operational for more than a decade . You can download this 50 odd Kb tool in the link given. After a quick install , and going through the helpful Tweak test that gives suggestions on how to use Dr. TCP . I found the MTU as specified above , then applied the settings and restarted .Here are the corresponding results which are actaully in three modes :
1. without any tweaking
2. with cach cleaning , allowing pings , and using dr.tcp without timestamping - which i actaully forgot to do .( they suggested to do it )
3. with cach cleaning , allowing pings , and using dr.tcp with timestamping
The results
Here are results from the speed tests done at SpeakEasy for all three modes. You can also try out other tests as posted in this thread .
So there you have it , real speeds and real improvements . Party on !
You cannot deny the fact that there are a lot of programs that claim to revolutionize your speeds . Some fake , some under rated . Some success stories . But then again you wonder - " nah ,probably not in my area / state " . So lets go through a collection of what all we can really do ,what all tools are out there ,find out if they work and analyse the results accordingly.
Before I start ...
Im running on a touctel 256 kbps connection with FIREFOX . and the following steps are those that i followed .Results of contrasting speeds will be shown below .
Cleaning browser cache
Doing this at regular periods of time helps since after weeks spent on the Internet, your Web browser could be stuffed with unncessary temporary files.
Allowing to be PingedFirefox
• Open the Edit menu.
• Select Preferences.
• Open the Advanced sub-categories and select "Cache".
• "Clear Cache" button.
• OK.
Mozilla:
• Open the Edit menu.
• Select Preferences.
• Open the Advanced sub-categories and select "Cache".
• "Clear Cache" button.
• OK.
Opera:
• Open the Edit menu.
• Select Preferences.
• Open the Advanced sub-categories and select "History".
• Select "Empty now" next to "Disk Cache" and "Memory Cache".
• OK.
For security reasons ,you might not always be happy with the thought of your Firewall accepting ICMP Requests , but heres the reason why it helps as well :
This allows you to see if there are congestion problems, bottlenecks, bad routers, and if something is wrong at your location. If you're not, the only thing the test is useful for is a fancy traceroute. source
Finding your connection's MTU
Open a command window (in XP, click Start-Run, type cmd and hit ) and then type the command ‘ping www.techenclave.com -f -l 1472’ . If you see the reply “Packet needs to be fragmented but DF setâ€, try lower byte values until this message stops appearing.
Add 28 to the number you used to get the optimum MTU. 1500 (1472+28) is the maximum possible MTU.
For eg: i got mine as 1464 .Which means i then add 28 to that to get my MTU.
And now the goodies
Looking through several such tools i picked up Dr.TCP which has been operational for more than a decade . You can download this 50 odd Kb tool in the link given. After a quick install , and going through the helpful Tweak test that gives suggestions on how to use Dr. TCP . I found the MTU as specified above , then applied the settings and restarted .Here are the corresponding results which are actaully in three modes :
1. without any tweaking
2. with cach cleaning , allowing pings , and using dr.tcp without timestamping - which i actaully forgot to do .( they suggested to do it )
3. with cach cleaning , allowing pings , and using dr.tcp with timestamping
The results
Here are results from the speed tests done at SpeakEasy for all three modes. You can also try out other tests as posted in this thread .
So there you have it , real speeds and real improvements . Party on !