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N9ZN
Security Is A Community Effort
join:2001-03-29
Tampa, FL

1 edit

N9ZN

Member

[Cable] Expert advice needed for SPEED ENHANCEMENT

Greetings to all!

I need to enhance and stabilize my internet speed and have fallen out of touch with the requirements to do so. This is a group I can count on for great feedback. Please find all RULE requested details below along with my future short term plans for this box.

If you need anything more just let me know.
**********************************************
1. Tweak test...
»/tweak ··· a=normal

2. Speedtest.net Tampa, Florida

3. Line Quality test
»/lineq ··· /2636069

4. CABLE internet from Road Runner. Modem is Motorola surfboard model SB5120.

5. NOT DSL

6. NOT PPPoE

7. OS is Vista Ultimate 32 bit

8. My speed is supposed to be 15Meg down and 5 Meg up. (I pay extra for this speed.)

9. PC is on a network with NO ICS or VPN active.

10.NAT is via NetGear model RP614 wired router with 4 of 4 ports in use. Two ports are hooked up to a Tied connection to the computer and The other two ports are being consumed by two VoIP Telephone processors.

11.I am not on DSL hence no wire degradation.
**********************************************
You have not ask but for the record I am submitting my detailed PC specs for reference.

a. Alienware Area-51 Desktop
b. Intel Extreme QX9650 45nm 3.0Ghz Quad core CPU
c. 2 each dual core NVIDIA 9800 GX2 GPU's running in QUAD SLI, with all voltages set to normal.
d. 2 each 160GB 7200 16MB Hard drives running Raid 0.
e. 4GB of 1533Mhz DDR3 7,7,7,20 low latency, dual channel, pc-10666 Patriot Viper Extreme memory.
f. Mother Board is EVGA 790i Ultra SLI
g. Ageia Physics PciE board
h. 3 each 30 inch Extra High Definition monitors.

An upgrade is in order for this PC (more cost effective than buying new)! I am preparing to (phase/water) cool the GPU's, north/south bridge, and CPU. Hard disk drives will be will be replaced with Solid State drives needing no cooling. Alienware case, power supply, and memory will remain fan cooled.

Once the additions are made I will add Windows 7 64 bit, and overclock the Mother Board, CPU, Memory, and GPU's to a stable high end speed over 4Ghz (hopefully over 4.75 GHz and verify the bench marks using Everest and other stress test software.

Once this summer project is complete your advice from this tweak will be applied anew to the new PC configuration.

Thanks in advance!
Monty

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

• What you posted all looks OK; except for the speed.

• There are no registry tweaks for Vista, so there is nada that you can do there.

• Latency in the Tweak Test and in the LQT is fine.

• Go to »192.168.100.1 and post what your signals are.

• Is this a new issue or has this been a long time issue?

N9ZN
Security Is A Community Effort
join:2001-03-29
Tampa, FL

N9ZN

Member

The Motorola Surfboard SIGNAL readings you requested from the modem on 198.168.100.1 are as follows;

UPSTREAM data
1. Frequency 657000000 Hz
2. Signal to Noise Ratio 36 dB
3. QAM QAM256
4. Network Access Control Object ON
5. Power Level 10 dBmV

DOWNSTREAM data
6. Channel ID 5
7. Frequency 33000000 Hz
8. Ranging Service ID 5727
9. Symbol Rate 2.560 Msym/s
10. Power Level 55 dBmV

To answer your question of how long this has been occurring.

This issue has been ongoing for over a year during which time I have been considering moving to a completely new PC platform or upgrading what I presently have. Cost factors not only won the debate but also will provide an enjoyable spring/summer project.

MY broadband speed degradation seems more noticeable after an "EVGA Bigfoot killer NIC" network card was removed after failures. This issue over the NIC card may be more of a perception issue than a reality and frankly I do not have enough data to support this as fact or perception.

Broadband computer speed has only recently become an elevated concern for this computer. Ongoing broadband concerns stem from the addition of multiple flight simulation software systems installed to supplement personal maintenance of General Aviation flight safety, navigation, and instrument flight rules proficiencies. This coupled with occasional multi-media use also explains the QUAD SLI implementation on this computer.

Prior to these events broadband speed was a matter of improving multiple PC access, VoIP phone quality, and the occasional multi-media use. I had no need to address broadband otherwise.

Presently our other PC's have been relocated to another isolated Broadband connection with no apparent broadband speed improvement realized on this computer. Our other computers have seen only slight improvement in broadband speed and likely have settings which cold be improved but are not needed. This leads me to believe computer settings are likely to explain the thru put issues for this PC. It seems more and more that a bottle neck is slowing both down and up load thru put and this has to be at the PC, router, cable modem, or combination thereof. Bright House, my ISP, tells me everything outside is working as intended and providing necessary speed capabilities to my modem.

The only known performance issues I am aware of are Broadband speed and hard disk drive thru put which has reached maximum thru put and will be relieved by the addition of solid state storage devices soon as part of the upgrade. All of the planned over clocking is icing on the cake, an undertaking planned because cost have come down enough for those components to make replacement affordable should a failure occur and the boost will enhance run-time abilities.

Now you have the whole story past, present and future. I hope this helps you and thanks for looking at this. If anyone else wants to jump in the ring and contribute, feel free to do so. All comments are welcome.

Monty
N9ZN

N9ZN

Member

I added something I may not have been clear on in earlier post.

WHAT I ALSO NEED TO KNOW...

1. What values can be changed on this computer which will affect the speed of inbound and outbound packets over TCPIP?

2. Where can I view and Change these values in Vista Ultimate?

3. What is the preferred method (tool or otherwise) of making changes to those values?

4. What are the recommended methods (like speedtest or tweak test as examples) to view the effectiveness of the changes and to determine if corrections need to be applied to further enhance broadband speed?

5. Anything I did not mention that I should have to be complete in my analysis and implementation?


I knew these things for Win XP a few years back. Unfortunately I have not kept up with this because of lack of need. It also seem that some of the tools used in Tweaking speed in Win XP Pro are not valid or use-able for Win Vista Ultimate.

If someone can point me in all the right directions it will jump start me so I can get this machine to BLAZE as it clearly should.

Of course I also want to hear your suggestions which is a primary reason for posting here.

Monty

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

As I said above, there are no registry tweaks for Vista. So all your bolds above are N/A; cannot be done.

Your transmit signal is at the max. It should be:
Transmit: 30dbmV to 55dbmV

That needs to get fixed. It may not be your only issue, but that is where I would start.

If I read your post correctly, you have a home run to that MODEM (ie, no splitters). If that is correct, you need to have your ISP do a truck roll to fix it. If that is not the case, please describe how the MODEM is connected to the drop.

N9ZN
Security Is A Community Effort
join:2001-03-29
Tampa, FL

N9ZN

Member

I live in a condo town-home so yes there are some wiring anomalies at my home.

The ISP routed the cable through the attic, into a signal booster (two terminations and the booster in-line), down to my office area (cable has 4 more terminations and one 3 way splitter) where it hooks up to a large LCD TV, A TV tuner card I forgot to mention in my specs., and two PC's only one of which are on simultaneously.

I remember the ISP messing with the modem signal when I last complained about speed issues with them.

My ISP seems satisfied that everything is fine as of the last tech visit well over a year ago. I know when you look at the computer everything is only a bit more than half way there broadband speed wise.

Bright House in Tampa works on the principle that they are always right no matter what. For them to qualify to be right they simply have to say they are. It took me 2 years to have them fix my address in their system, so I would not get disconnected, since they had a neighbor with my address in their system who would not pay his bills. I had to get the county 911 to send them a letter of evidence explaining that I live at my home and the other person lives at another address. Even government had it right, I couldn't believe the level of moronic arrogance executives at Bright House live and work by in Tampa. After all of this they still had to have a team of people come out and verify the information for themselves before they changed the address.

The reason that last paragraph is relevant is because the executive who worked the address change is the same director who is in charge of Metropolitan Tampa field operations. Every field tech in the Tampa area works under her.

I rechecked last night to make sure of my PAID FOR SPEED. The ISP said I am paying for 2048 KILO BYTES UP and 15,360 KILO BYTES DOWN. So the data I entered in the tweak test was actually low, I entered 12000KBs.

I want to have them install their 40Mb service but at this rate it only looks like a cash cow for them and about what I should be getting now for me, 1/2 the advertised speed.
N9ZN

N9ZN to Irish Shark

Member

to Irish Shark

Below is speakeasy from Tampa TO Seattle results
Last Result:
Download Speed: 23184 kbps (2898 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1694 kbps (211.8 KB/sec transfer rate)


The problem seems to be the modem. These test were generated after making several tweaks to the registry for things like auto-configuration, MTU, QOS, and about 8 other items.

I could add a DWORD for RWIN but didn't and decide to let Vista do the configuration however the parameters for how large the packets can grow has been modified considerably.

Thanks for the help and if your interested in the VISTA REGISTRY tweaks I did let me know. I will Pvt MSG you with them if you want to know. Funny the best speed is to Seattle and the worst speed is where I live. No worries tho I know why that likely is the way it is.

Monty
N9ZN

1 edit

N9ZN to Irish Shark

Member

to Irish Shark
Go figure, I just got off the phone with Bright House and they don't want to bring me a new modem and check these lines since I moved the other computers off them.

If I want another modem I can bring it in to them and exchange it. Wonderful for me and if there is a problem I will be running back and forth. This time around I believe I will change their way of thinking.

»/tweak ··· a=normal
»/lineq ··· /2636629

Thought I would post the results on these. I don't understand the loss on the receive from the west coast other than all zero receipts were in a group. My guess is net congestion.

What do you think?

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

• The Tweak Test is useless for Vista except displaying the MTU reported setting.

• The LQT shows some packet loss at your location. It could be transient loss or an item that needs attention. Keep an eye on for the next week.

• Did you call your ISP on your signals?

• Did you replace the MODEM and then test again? Or just used the same MODEM?

• I do not know how "Vista Tweaks" can relate to a MODEM issue.

• I am very familiar with the snake oil tweaks. Just to see if they really made any difference, set them back to what they were. Run some speed tests and let's see what you get.

N9ZN
Security Is A Community Effort
join:2001-03-29
Tampa, FL

N9ZN

Member

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

I spent a half hour typing up the changes I made and hit the back button on the side of my mouse. I guess that's next to be disabled LOL I'll take the micro switch out of that sucker now.

To make a detailed story very short (don;t feel like typing it all over) I made about 12 to 15 changes and additions in regedit and via netsh.

I used the modem from the other PC's to eliminate the modem I had on this machine. I have had to return it however since it is difficult to get to and everyone will not wait until the new modem arrives and is checked out.

Auto tuning was left on but in a different state to allow greater packet growth. Given that alone I do not expect to see much of a change from the tweaks but should see a little. Vista is still in control of packet growth only just a little more aggressively now. Nagel is one thing I may try disabling simply because some of the kids in the house play World of Warcraft on-line and could take advantage of the small packet transmission if the nagle patch works at all on vista. Most of the info I have seen on it seems to be developed from older OS's and applied to Vista.

One important thing I did mention before I lost it all is that I NEED SOME RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A NEW ROUTER. The one I am using is also introducing blockage during transfer. It is noticeable and accounts for slightly over 2Mbs but not seen going over 3Mbs loss. As routers go they are very susceptible to lightning where I live from the cable interface. Because of that I prefer to go as CHEAP as I can but not so cheap to acquire junk. Wireless would be nice and would be nice to isolate the PC from lightning via cable.

As soon as I get a replacement modem and it is checked out I will post new speed, latency, and ping data. I plan on rolling back the tweaks and doing comparative test during that period also.

Now I need to check on system chip, CPU, teaming, and driver support for the change to chimney offload but it looks promising since I am seeing one of the adaptors offloaded in netstat.

I guess that's about it for the shorter long version .

Keep in touch and I will get back with more info ASAP.

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

Now that makes more sense. Your old MODEM is most likely DOA. So you have two things going on: a different MODEM and the Vista "tweaks". To getter it is is impossible to see what caused the speeds to jump.

Here is a FAQ that I did for OOL. Not all routers are listed because it would be impossible to test every router sold. It will give you a good place to start. »Optimum Online FAQ »What routers are compatible with OOL's standard & Boost tiers?

Here are a bunch of "tweaks" and most likely you used some or all of these. »www.speedguide.net/read_ ··· ?id=2574

I cannot find the MS description and recommended settings. IIRC MS said to leave them alone. There might have been some that they said were OK to try.

N9ZN
Security Is A Community Effort
join:2001-03-29
Tampa, FL

N9ZN

Member

said by Irish Shark:

Your old MODEM is most likely DOA.
Not DOA lets say living in it's final years well past retirement age. I am still on that modem until a replacement arrives.
So you have two things going on: a different MODEM and the Vista "tweaks". To getter it is is impossible to see what caused the speeds to jump.
Rest assured. I am certain changing the modem was the thing that increased my speed. As mentioned above I don't expect any of the tweaking done to have accomplished much other than a slightly more aggressive auto tuning sizing. The tweaks may help but in the end it's like comparing a 5000 sq foot home with a 5100 sq foot home if you get my drift on that.

I frankly don not even know how I can prove or disprove such a small amount of gain or loss for that matter. This is considering the instability of the internet as a test bed.
Here is a FAQ that I did for OOL. Not all routers are listed because it would be impossible to test every router sold. It will give you a good place to start. »Optimum Online FAQ »What routers are compatible with OOL's standard & Boost tiers?
I took a peek and it does give me some ideas. Now that it turned on the light a bit I believe I can locate something that will handle a minimum of 45Mbps to 50Mbps down and 15Mbps up. That will take care of my moving on to our local offer of 40Mbps service which comes with an extra direct to the modem as I understand it. From what I have been told Bright House pulls connectivity from multiple sources to insure those speeds are maintained. In fact they may provide a router guaranteed to handle the speed and I need to ask that question.
Here are a bunch of "tweaks" and most likely you used some or all of these. »www.speedguide.net/read_ ··· ?id=2574

I cannot find the MS description and recommended settings. IIRC MS said to leave them alone. There might have been some that they said were OK to try.
Without doubt there are sever published tweaks I stayed away from simply due to the fact they were from older OS's. Others were not needed because problems had been fixed in SP1 of Vista.

Some of the tweaks at SpeedGuide were implemented only after I had complete backups of the registry and you have to remember this OS is short time to live as I will be upgrading soon. If for any reason it gets trashed it is fine so that make experimenting palatable.

I did find some other information from a few other places as well. They all were found by a Copernic search of the net. Rarely will I rely on one place for a source unless they have a good track record like DslReports.

I have noticed tweaking has really dropped off in the forum and it seems to be quite a bit. I am guessing that is due to Vistas auto tuning capability which obviously works well. That is a fact I personally have observed. Too bad in one way because I do remember the days when this site was buzzing with activity daily from folks trying to get broadband to stream like it should. I also remember all the happy people and the smiles everyone put on their faces. Pinan has been around and remembers those times.

Now that I have a better understanding of Microsoft it would not surprise me if those days of high demand didn't return. They seem to have a history of developing a decent OS, following it with OS's that were mostly junk, and repeating that cycle all over again. My guess is that that may be a management directed strategy to cause us to upgrade more frequently. Companies do those things sometimes they are referred to as revenue releases in the industry. I objectionably worked for one in Silicon Valley a few years back, eventually they were bought out by another large software house. The private owner of the company had grown old and walked away with pockets lined with cash as did many of the higher level execs.

I probably should not mention having to change all the jumpers on the computer boards. That's the way I learned to program a computer initially, software did not exist at that time. Thank GOD that basic assembly language and card punches were developed along with the IBM Model 50-H mainframe which made life much easier. IBM was the king and Microsoft didn't exist.

After having been involved with this ever changing learning cycle I am experiencing a loss a excitement for implementing new technology yet I can't quite give it up. It's been a long marriage!

After thinking back it makes having these little PC's rather enjoyable again. I bet the guy that playfully dropped several trays of coded punch cards that I worked on for over a year likely feels that way also. Considering he had to use my coded templates and manually resort the thousands of cards that were dropped as a lesson in being careful. He became a programmer not long after that.

Monty

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

Monty, yes keep us up to date on your final resolution.

PlsHelpThanx
@qwest.net

PlsHelpThanx to N9ZN

Anon

to N9ZN
can someone advise how i optimize my speed:

»/tweak ··· a=normal

Irish Shark
Play Like A Champion Today
MVM
join:2000-07-29
Las Vegas, NV

Irish Shark

MVM

Start your own thread and answer these questions »Posting Rules - Broadband Tweaks