Monday, September 17, 2001		Article

Fine-tune modem for better surfing
Vipul Verma

COMPUTERS today are not merely an office tool, but have become an integral part of the modern life. Thanks to the Internet that has served as a catalyst in the PC revolution. The Internet, which enabled voice chatting and e-mail for a common man is today one of the hottest computer application. Almost all computer users today use the Internet in some way or the other. This has made the gadget, which allows the Internet connectivity — the modem as one of the most vital part of the computer. Today, no computer is complete without a modem and there are many makes and models available for various types of modems. Right from USB and Serial port, simple PSTN modems, the range includes, ISDN, xDSL, cable modems etc. However, despite being such an important part of the modern computer system, modems are also often ignored gadgets. Normally, one purchases modems on the advice of the hardware dealer, without realising the importance in one’s own perspective. Or one goes for the cheapest modems available in the market for the latest and most modern computer system, which he plans to buy. However, this practice is not correct. One should compare the features of modems from their users manual. Unnamed 56 KBPS modems are not actually capable of delivering the best.

So, as the first tip, you must firstly research the various modems in your given parameters. Second, there has always been a debate, which is a better modem between and Internal and an External modem. Both are capable of delivering results and are equally convenient to use. However, the results may vary under different line condition. For example, in the poor line condition the external modem was found to deliver better results in comparison to the Internal modems. Moreover in locations where lightening is a problem, an external modem may be safer against a lightening-caused voltage spike on the phone line. However, in most of the cases, both modems were found to be delivering identical results. But, in this case we tested good quality modems instead of most commonly used unnamed SM56PCI. This was something about the modem hardware. Now to talk of software the first thing, which is most critical for optimum performance from modem is the use of correct drivers. Remember, it is not sufficient that your modem is working and you are able to connect to the Internet. The most important is that your modem is optimally configured to give the optimal performance. For the optimal performance, always use the latest drivers available from the manufacturer’s Web site and do not use the substitute drivers as far as possible. Moreover depending upon your problems like frequent disconnection and poor connectivity you can also use strings in advanced settings, though you should not use it normally.

You can also enhance the performance of the Internet with the help of some registry tweaks. However, it is worth mentioning here that these tips involve registry editing and thus before attempting to effect any change in the registry it is advised to take a thorough back up of your registry, so that in case if the settings do not work or something else goes wrong in your case, you may easily restore your original settings and discard the new one. Once you take the backup of registry, the first step would be to Add MaxMTU to your Registry. In this case first open the RegEdit and then goto: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ Class\ NetTrans\ 0002. Now add MaxMTU as a New String Value and Give it a value of 576. Windows will then automatically set the MSS setting to (MaxMTU - 40), which is 536. You should not try to edit it. Now add DefaultRcvWindow (RWin) to your Registry. For doing this open RegEdit and then goto:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ VxD\ MSTCP. Now add DefaultRcvWindow as a New String Value and give it a value of (MSS x 4), which is 2144. Further add DefaultTTL (Time-to-Live [TTL]) to your Registry. Windows uses a default TTL value of 32 while the rest of the computing world uses values of 60 to 255. If a Web site is too far away for the TTL you cannot talk to it at all as the connection attempt to the site times out. If you can talk at site then any timeouts after that are not related to the TTL. So, in order to improve it open RegEdit and goto:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/VxD/MSTCP and add DefaultTTL as a New String Value. Next give it a value of 128. Now close RegEdit and reboot. Moreover, after doing the following entries, you should also change the COM port speed of your computer to 921600 BPS in the modem configuration under control panel. Please not that these settings are for older editions of Windows, including Windows ’95, Windows ’95 plus, and earlier editions of Windows ’98. The settings for the later editions could be different. Further in order to boost the Internet performance, you should only use the protocols that you need. If you use your computer to connect both to your network LAN remotely and the Internet, you might need more
than one protocol.

For example, the protocol used for the LAN might be IPX/SPX or it might be TCP/IP. Make sure that you only install the protocols that you actually use and should not retain the protocols, which are not in use. Most persons do not use NetBEUI these days. So, if you do not use it, remove it. This also helps in enhancing the performance of modem and the Internet.

Furthermore, you can enhance the speed by minimising the animation by using the following tip. However, the usual warning — you must take the back up before attempting this tip as it involves the Windows registry editing. Thus to add more speed to your Internet connection, by turning off the Windows Animation simply open the regedit and goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\ desktop\ WindowMetrics and add a string value named MinAnimate - set it to 0 [0(off) or 1 (on)]. Close Regedit and reboot your system.