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Geek Culture / boost your network speed by 20%

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Phaelax
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Posted: 11th Oct 2009 08:56
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I think this trick actually works. I ran a speedtest and got about 13Mb down. Made this little change, rebooted the PC, then ran the same test again and got 17Mb. I would say that's about a 20% boost.

1. Go to Start-> Run-> and type gpedit.msc
2. Expand the Administrative Templates branch
3. Expand the Network tab
4. Highlight QoS Packet Scheduler
5. Click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth and check the enabled box
6. Then Change the Bandwidth limit % to 0%
7. Reboot your workstation

If it's not enabled, by default it will reserve 20% of your bandwidth.

I also deleted a registry entry that causes windows to look for scheduled tasks on network shares which may hopefully give an initial boost when browsing my local network.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 01:57
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Hey it works! This is great!!!

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 01:59
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...what negative effect might this have? It wouldn't exist if it had no positive consequence.

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David R
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 02:06 Edited at: 12th Oct 2009 02:06
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I looked this parameter up on TechNet and got this:

Quote: "Specifies the maximum, total percentage of link bandwidth that all QoS-aware applications on this computer can reserve. If no QoS-aware application reserves any bandwidth, then this setting has no effect and all bandwidth is available for use by other applications. If a QoS-aware application reserves more bandwidth than it uses, then the unused, reserved bandwidth is available for use by other applications. The reservation does not ensure that the bandwidth will be available to the QoS-aware application because applications that are not QoS-aware might consume too much bandwidth. For example, the default value of the registry entry reserves 80 percent of the bandwidth for QoS-aware applications, but this does not prevent other applications from using more than the remaining 20 percent of the bandwidth."


Which does not entirely make sense to me - but the gist I get (especially from the non-QoS-aware bit) is that this change will not be entirely positive - or at least, depends what you're using with it (and may not have any effect at all - I'm not sure what a QoS-aware app is or what library/calls it has to use in order to be QoS aware)

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 02:08
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So Windows gives more bandwidth to programs capable of managing it better? I think?

And changing this variable alters the ratio?

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 02:36
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Well I presumed that Virgin (my provider) may have set this to save their own bandwidth, but I have no idea, but it works.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 03:14
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It basically reserves 20% of your bandwidth for specific uses, such as automatic updates. So if you could download at a max of 100KB, the cap would be set at 80KB so even when you've maxed out your available bandwidth, you could still download updates at 20KB. And there's other services that might use it.

Basically its a way of prioritizing network traffic.

I'm still trying to fully understand the service myself, but this article might help a litte.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q316666&

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 03:20
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I thought updates were handled by Background Intelligent Transfer Service?

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Phaelax
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 03:26
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yea you're right, it doesn't use QoS.

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BatVink
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 15:16
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QoS is for anything that requires a minimum amount of bandwidth to work. For example, voice data. So if you use Skype and you set this value to 0%, then other applications can eat into Skype's minimum requirements.

In some cases, the application that relies on QoS may crash if it's data is interrupted.

So yes, it does have it's downsides. Skype is just one example, any streamed data is going to be negatively impacted.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 15:23
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Can't be too well written if it crashes because it doesn't get the bandwidth it wants. I understand it's important to dedicate a proportion of network resources to streaming media, but wouldn't it make more sense if packets could be marked as streaming (such as games, voice chat, etc.) and given priority?

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the_winch
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 19:55 Edited at: 12th Oct 2009 19:59
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http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q316666&

Quote: "As in Windows 2000, programs can take advantage of QoS through the QoS APIs in Windows XP. One hundred percent of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a program specifically requests priority bandwidth. This "reserved" bandwidth is still available to other programs unless the requesting program is sending data."


I don't see any posible way changing this setting could increase overall network speed.

By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Oct 2009 20:05 Edited at: 12th Oct 2009 20:05
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Maybe some sneaky people are using it to send data that we don't want. It works for me anyway.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 13th Oct 2009 05:01
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Me too.

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David R
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Posted: 13th Oct 2009 11:49
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Placebo effect, unless you've actually done a statistical speed test of some form

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 13th Oct 2009 15:02
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I am going by adverts not slowing down my computer. There is a site where the adverts have slowed my computer down for 2 years, and the moment I did the fix, the adverts no longer have any effect on my computer.

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BatVink
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Posted: 13th Oct 2009 17:01
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Quote: "wouldn't it make more sense if packets could be marked as streaming (such as games, voice chat, etc.) and given priority?"


That's what QoS is doing.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 15th Oct 2009 04:28
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Quote: "Placebo effect, unless you've actually done a statistical speed test of some form"


Quote: "I ran a speedtest and got about 13Mb down. Made this little change, rebooted the PC, then ran the same test again and got 17Mb."


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Toasty Fresh
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Posted: 15th Oct 2009 13:18 Edited at: 16th Oct 2009 09:26
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Just seems to make a mine much slower.

EDIT: NVM, sorry; seems I went over my monthly DL limit
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David R
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Posted: 15th Oct 2009 16:07 Edited at: 15th Oct 2009 16:08
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Quote: " I ran a speedtest and got about 13Mb down. Made this little change, rebooted the PC, then ran the same test again and got 17Mb."


I was thinking more of a local speed test. Remote speed tests have waaay too many variations to make for a conclusive increase/decrease result. Your 20% boost in that instance may well have occurred due to caching mechanisms (e.g. DNS cache) or other variations - you can't conclusively say it was QoS that improved it.

For any where near a conclusive result with a remote speedtest, you should have performed it 2 or 3 times before the change, and 2 or 3 times afterwards. That way could at least see the variations caused over time without changes

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