How to tweak your high-speed modem for better performance

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate,

Question: Are there any tweaks and tips to speed up my high speed modem?

Answer: High-speed Internet modems include cable and DSL (or digital subscriber line) modems. You have one if you have an always on-connection and get your Internet through your cable TV provider, through the phone company's high-speed service or through a third party "DSL" provider.

If you dial a phone number with your modem to get to the Internet then you don't have a high-speed modem.

The best way to increase your modem's speed is to tweak a setting in the Windows registry, which is a hidden filing cabinet of information in Windows 95/98/Me/NT or XP.

What you want to do is change value on the "TCP receive window". It sounds complicated, but it's not.

First determine the latency in your connection. This is the delay in how long it takes for a chunk of data to be sent to a remote Web site over the Internet. To do this, go to START/Accessories./ then Command Prompt. A little back window will pop up at the prompt (>) type ping yahoo.com and hit enter.

Then a bunch of text will appear. Look for the line that says "approximate round trip times in milli-seconds". There will be an item that says "Average=". If that number is below 100 ms (milliseconds) then you have low latency. If you have latency of 100 to 200 ms, that's considered average. If you have latency over 200 ms, then that's high.

Do this a few times with different sites that are far away from you. Use other web site addresses such as amazon.com, cnn.com, msnbc.com. Don't forget to use the ping command with each.

This will give you a good average of the averages.

Next go to this page and download the appropriate REG file to your computer and put it somewhere you can find it.

Be sure to choose the right file for both the type of oeprating system that you have as well as the right latency.

Then locate it and double click it. Your system will update the registry.

To find out how to downlaod a file from the Internet, see this how-to column.

Alternately you vna use the automatic patches found on this site: http://www.speedguide.net/Cable_modems/cable_patches.shtml

If this column still doesn't fully help you with questions about tweaking your high speed modem or if you need personalized help with a problem, please see: Emergency Help.