According to feedback here and elsewhere, the article I posted last week on increasing one's browsing speed made a real difference with certain systems. Here's another trick that might improve your online performance. This is for WinXP.
Certain programs that require online access use what's called the "QoS Policy" in Windows, which allots them a slice of your bandwidth. In its wild and fanciful way, Windows somehow figures that receiving a business fax or accessing an online database is more important than downloading more Web porn — those crazy fools.
Traditionally, if someone's tweaking their system, the QoS is turned off. But I was reading a guide the other day and it said that some programs will sense it's off and turn it back on, so the 'trick' is to leave it on — but set it to 0%.
Relatively easy procedure is below the fold.
Note: If the computer is used by different people using different Windows customized settings (meaning, everybody logs on with a different name), you'll want to log on as 'Administrator' so the change will be made globally. 'Administrator' is a default name (you won't find it in Control Panel/Users) and uses the password (if any) that was used when installing Windows. If for some reason it doesn't work or you can't figure it out, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and make the tweak.
Here's the routine:
- Go to Start Menu, 'Run'
- Enter "gpedit.msc", OK
- On the left side of the box, click on the plus sign next to the first "Administrative Templates" to open up the menu, then the one next to "Network"
- Click on the icon next to "QoS Packet Scheduler" and some stuff should pop up on the right
- On the right, double-click "Limit reservable bandwidth"
- Set the percent to "0", OK
- Close down the box
If we only dealt with programs that alloted themselves bandwidth when they were up and in use, this might not be worth the bother. The problem arises when some program is constantly 'live', running in the background, like a fax program might. Then it could be grabbing its percentage of bandwidth whenever Windows is up, and for no real reason. So it's best just to turn it down to zero and not worry about it.
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