Optimising your Broadband Connection

[Alan b]

It hasn't made an difference for me either.

[Keiran2K8]

Im going to do this and will post the difference, Before and After!
Remember that you should be clearing all Temporary Files, So that you dont get a CACHED/FAKED result!

Before :

Download Speed: 6272 kbps (784 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 592 kbps (74 KB/sec transfer rate)

After : Download Speed: 6806 kbps (850.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 466 kbps (58.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Just a slight difference but its a DIFFERENCE!

[tinx]

I did this last night. Ran a speedtest before.

Download speed: 2734 kbps


Then after

Download speed:- 4835 kbps


I am very happy as you can imagine.

[hugsie]

When it works it works well!

[steves]

What I dont understand is that the Sky Router shows the DownStream & Upstream Connection Speed so how can TCPOptimizer being run on my laptop affect the download speed shown on the router? I have the Mid package but am getting 3.3mb rather than 8.

[Saturday]

The router shows the speed it has negotiated with the exchange.

To use a not very good analogy, think of the speed as how fat the "pipe" is between your laptop and the internet. With a fast connection that pipe is very fat.

The thing is, Windows' default settings are expecting a thin pipe so there is a bit of a bottleneck at the point the pipe enters your laptop. By using something like TCPOptimizer you're opening up that bottleneck to the size of the fat pipe.

[Stephen Kirrage]

It would be helpful to have an explanation in one of the forum's 'sticky' posts regarding speeds. Here's what I mean: I pay SKY for a 16MB connection; the actual connection seems to negociate somewhere between 9 and 13MB. Currently it is 9490KBps. When I speed test at BroadbandMax.co.uk I get 8485 download but with performance.toast.net I get 3361 and with btopenworld.com/speedtest i get 930KBps. What is that all about?!!

[hugsie]

No you currently pay for an up to 16MB connection. Speed is dependent on line quality and distance from the the exchange. Speed tests are not consistently reliable as they are affected by how busy their servers are, so you can get one result at one time and a completely different one at another having made no changes to your set up.

[Stephen Kirrage]

I understand about the "up to 16MB connection", it's the usual marketing bull one has to live with. The speed tests I have done endlessly at different times of the day and they are always of the order of magnitude given above. The BroadbandMax always 6-8MB, BT between 250k and 1.5M and toast 900k to 3M. Toast allows you to select different servers which gives a variation of 1.5M at the top end. When one test shows a lower speed all rthe other rests do and vice versa so in one sense they are consistent. Seems very strange and confusing though.