1. Windows 95/98/ME Tweak for Broadband

2. DrTCP Utility to configure your connection

3. Dump the large cache!

4. Testing your connection speed

• Your first stop should be DSLReports, and take the Tweak Test. With these results, you're able to determine what, if any changes need to be made. Of course this isn't all inclusive and you'll have to do more work to get your connection up to speed, but it's a start.

• Your next stop should be here to use the TCP/IP Analyzer to get useful info on items such as your Default Receive Window (RWIN), MTU, MSS, and TTL Value.

Windows 95/98/ME Tweak for Broadband

You can boost your network throughput performance with Windows 95/98/ME by making these adjustments to your registry, or by using DrTCP. I suggest using this free utility to make any changes and prevent much of the risk involved editing the registry manually.

If you still wish to edit these values manually, open regedit  and navigate to the keys below and make the suggested changes.

DefaultTTL="128" (String Value)
Specifies time to live (TTL) for TCP/IP packets. The default value is 32.

DefaultRcvWindow = "32767" (String Value)
Specifies the default receive window advertised by the TCP/IP stack. The default is 8192.

PMTUBlackHoleDetect = "0" (String Value)
Specifies if the stack will attempt to detect MTU  that does not send back ICMP . The default is 0.

PMTUDiscovery = "1" (String Value)
Specifies if the TCP/IP stack will attempt to perform MTU discovery as specified in RFC 1191. The default is 1.

SackOpts = "1" (String Value)
Enables support for selective acknowledgements as documented by Request for Comment (RFC) 2018. Default is 0.

Tcp1323Opts = "1" (DWORD Value)
Controls RFC 1323 time stamps and window scaling options. Values include: "0" = disable RFC 1323 options, "1" = window scale enabled only, "2" = time stamps enabled only and "3" = both options enabled.

The MaxMTU should be at a value of 1500. If you're using PPPoE, change this value to 1492

Close regedit and restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Helpful Tools

DrTCP - A handy utility to manually configure your connection to get the most out of that broadband connection as you can see from the image below. (The MaxMTU for a PPPoE connection is 1492)

On a broadband connection, there is absolutely no need for a 450 MB or larger Internet cache. Why? Because 99% of the time you can retrieve the information quicker by downloading it than by pulling it from your cache. Say you have a 450MB cache. Not only does IE have to weed through it, but in the process your system performance suffers as these files add to fragmentation.

An added benefit to reducing the cache is the time needed to defrag along with doing a virus scan.

In MSIE, go to Tools, Internet Options and under Temporary Internet Files, choose Settings. Move the slider towards the left to reduce it. On my system I chose 45MB and notice no slowdown in page retrieval.

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