Increase Network Performance By Shane Of PcWinTech.com
For Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/2008
I decided to write this tweak guide after a recent job for a customer. The
customer had a 1GB switch and yet was getting horrible network speeds on a
couple of the systems.
All data was stored on a Windows 2003 server and the workstations pulled the
data as they needed.
I installed my Simple Internet Meter to see what kind of speeds where going to
and from the server. And the speed was shocking. It was only going 1 MB/s or
slower.
After doing some fine tuning and tweaking I got the speed going 40MB/s across
the network.
This tweaks are pretty simple. I have complied a short list of tweaks here for
all Windows systems.
Tweak #1.
Flow Control
Flow Control has always given me better speeds when enabled. All Network cards I
have seen are normally Enabled, yet Nvidia for some odd reason is set to disable
by default.
So make sure Flow Control is enabled.
Tweak #2
Optimize For
Now this tweak is mainly for Nvidia network adapters. I haven't seen this
settings on others. The Optimize For setting by default is set to CPU. Changing
it to Throughput made a HUGE increase on network speed for me. Again not sure
why Nvidia would have this set to CPU when most system these days have more than
enough cores and speed to handle network speeds.
Tweak #3
Remote Differential Compression
This tweak is For Vista and Windows 7. Turning this setting off help increase
the
speed on my local networks.
Tweak #4
Registry Tweaks
This tweaks I applied to both the server and all the work stations,
this also help with a increase in network speed and stability.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters]
"autodisconnect"=dword:ffffffff
"Size"=dword:00000003
"EnableOplocks"=dword:00000000
"IRPStackSize"=dword:00000020
"SharingViolationDelay"=dword:00000000
"SharingViolationRetries"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory
Management]
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001
Tweak #5
Windows 7 on a 1GB transferring to a 100MB machine.
I am on Windows 7 64bit. With a 1GB network. For as long as the system has
been installed any time I transferred files to or from my machine to another
computer that was also on a 1gb connection the transfer was fast as could be (40
mb/s). But if the other machine was on 100MB instead the transfers where
horrible! On 100MB I should transfer about 10 mb/s instead it would go 100 kb/s
it was horrible.
I searched and finally found the reason.
In the network adapter properties, if you have these options, you need to
turn them all off. (Same area as Tweak #1 & #2)
Large Send Offload (IPv4) - Disable
Large Send Offload (IPv6) - Disable
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) - Disable
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) - Disable
Once I did that speeds to the 100MB machines went as fast as they could, back
at 10 mb/s.
Why on earth this hasn't been fixed by Microsoft I don't know. But at least
now I have it working again :-)
