Feeding the need for speed

Tweak the system to get transfer rate up to par

Things are slowly getting back to normal at Stately Granese Manor, with the last vestiges of the winter holidays being carted out to the curb and the refrigerator finally emptied of those plates of leftovers married people are so determined to force on their unmarried friends.

Some household appliances, like my garbage disposal, have been working at optimum efficiency. Others, like my high-speed Internet connection, have not. I noticed it a few days ago while transferring a file of moderate size from a Usenet newsgroup to my home computer. My transfer speed, which was once far closer to the six megabits per second promised by my provider, had fallen to less than a quarter of that rate.

I thought it might have been my system, so I set about doing all the stupid human tricks their support line has you do when you call complaining about low transfer speeds. I turned off my computer, router and modem and restarted them carefully, giving every device a chance to initialize. There was no improvement.

Not to be deterred, I followed time-honored methods of tweaking and fiddling with the connection. With no help from my ISP, who may have been busy making commercials showing people playing with what appears to be highly toxic mercury, I finally got things back to where they should be.

I never did find out what the problem was, and at this point I don’t care. Some ISPs throttle speeds to known high-volume sites. Sometimes individual settings get skewed, making transfers bog down. With a few free resources, I managed to overcome the problem. Here’s a look at the steps I took. Maybe they can help you fine-tune your downloading, too.

These tweaks and tricks may be a bit beyond the ken of new and inexperienced users. Don’t mess with your system if you are not completely sure of what you are doing. Make a full system backup before trying any tweaks, and back up your registry, too. Don’t just jump in and start changing things. Make notes to document the changes made in the order they are performed so you can backtrack if necessary. Anyone scared off by this warning may be better off not taking any of the steps I mention here.

www.broadbandreports.com

Before things get going, it is important to have a look at the state of your system. In particular, check the speed with which you can transfer files. I normally use a website at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest for this purpose. Lately, my results have been unrealistically high.

I attribute that to some kind of fast download enhancement installed by my ISP. It is purported to make smaller downloads much faster. For me, all it seems to do is skew the speed test results far higher. I’m not sure if it is smoke and mirrors, I just know that I need to turn elsewhere for an accurate appraisal of my connection speed. That place is the Broadband Reports website tools section.

It has links to nearly 300 speed tests, more than enough for me to get a good idea of my connection’s efficiency. Just to be sure, I also tested a connection in a different location. As expected, the Speakeasy test showed wildly high speeds, with other meters running about right for the connections, as purported by the provider.

After running a couple dozen tests I stopped to check my file transfer rates and still found slow times. That told me I would have to look elsewhere for my fix. For helping me determine the speed of my connection easily and for free, www.broadbandreports.com grabs five hobbled spiders.

www.speedguide.net 

Still unhappy with my slow downloads, I decided to take further action. After nosing around the Internet and finding dozens of other Comcast users in a similar spot, I found my way at the SpeedGuide website. This wonderful resource is dedicated to all aspects of speeding up the personal computing experience. Note that there are literally hundreds of ways to trash your computer here, so proceed with caution.

I found solace in a free utility called TCPOptimizer. I downloaded it in seconds and ran it on my computer almost immediately. It provided a wealth of information about my Internet connection, much of it virtually incomprehensible. The website had an easy explanation of how the program works, and I suggest you read it carefully before proceeding.

Fortunately, the site provided an optimal settings selection, which I used to calculate the proper settings for my system. It showed me my current settings and allowed me to adjust them to improve the efficiency of my throughput. It worked beautifully the first time I used it, and I made all the suggested changes permanent.

When I stopped to check my connection speed, I found that transfers were working a good bit better, but still not up to the usual speed. Still, TCPOptimizer and the SpeedGuide website were a great help in getting things going in the right direction. For helping me fulfill my need for speed, www.speedguide.net zips up five spiders.

www.freedownloadmanager.org

Downloading through a web browser can be a tricky proposition. Just clicking the link may give you a satisfying file transfer experience, or it may send you out on a daylong experiment in futility. Most Web habitués suggest using a download manager to optimize transfer rate. As the name implies, Free Download Manager is just such a utility.

The program is small and requires little overhead. It downloads quickly and sets up in no time. Free Download Manager offers several excellent features. First, it supports download resume, which means that if your transfer is interrupted for virtually any reason, you can easily pick up where you left off rather than starting over.

Best of all, it allows you to open multiple streams to truly optimize the transfer. You can open several streams at once to let you utilize the full speed of your connection. Three volume levels within the program let you tailor it to your individual downloading style.

Free Download Manager did the trick. I was hauling down test files at six Mbps with no problems. I could queue downloads, automating the process for unattended transfer, and I had a complete log to let me know how things went when the transfer was completed. This was a truly great solution. For helping me overcome my still inexplicable downloading problems, www.freedownloadmanager.org packs up five spiders.

Remember the warning. You can really trash your system by fiddling with it. Make sure all important data is backed up safely before beginning even the smallest adjustments.  As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it unnecessarily. Let me know what kind of file transfer speeds you have been getting by email. Happy downloading.