> I now have an ADSL connection.  I would have though that MaxMTU,
> MSS, RWIN,
> and TTL should be left at the same settings for a dial-up connection (576,
> etc.), since at least the ones I understand should depend on the
> capabilities
> of the whole internet, not just my ISP's network.  However,
> someone on the net
> advised much higher settings.  Please advise.

        Unfortunately many older versions of Windows had default settings that can
dramatically affect your throughput with higher speed connections.

MaxMTU - this one CAN lead to big problems IF it is set to high. You mention
you use ADSL, is it a DHCP service or the more common PPPoE? If it's PPPoE
you should set you're MaxMTU to 1454, that is the maximum size possible with
PPPoE. If it's DHCP set it to 1500 (the max Ethernet packet size) and only
decrease the size if you have problems. If you are interested I can instruct
you on how to determine the maximum packet size available on you're
connection. Why is big good? Well the bigger the packet size the less
percentage of you're traffic is wasted on packet headers. That is why 576,
the default for dialup, is bad for broadband. It's good for dialup though
because of the much lower speed and the larger possibility of packet
corruption.

RWIN - This one has lead to dramatic increases in performance for the
Windows systems I've tweaked. Usually you're RWIN default is perfect for
high bandwidth, low latency network connections (ie. LAN). The problem is
most broadband access is relatively high bandwidth but also higher latency.
This is what RWIN does: when you send a TCP packet the sending machine must
receive a response that the packet was received intact. This is great for
data integrity but bad for high speed since the sending machine is spending
most of it's time waiting for packet receipts to arrive. RWIN is a Receive
Window, it's a buffer that the sending machine uses. It sends packets until
that buffer is full, the bigger the buffer the more packets sent. That way
the sender can send packets even though the previous few packet receipts
haven't come back. It is called a "sliding window" method. High latency
means the receipts take longer to return, so by increasing you're RWIN
you're increasing the number of packets sent before the sender has to stop
because returned receipts haven't come yet. However, you can't set this
value TOO high because a corrupt packet means the whole buffer needs to be
flushed, resulting in wasted bandwidth. There are charts that recommend
certain sizes for certain bandwidth and latencies so the best settings for
you might be different than for me. I have mine set at 64k, although 32k is
usually more commonly recommended. I say try a few values and see what it
gets you.

MSS - don't know this one, sorry

For more information on all this stuff (and recommendations for you're
system) go to http://www.dslreports.com. They have scripts and programs that
can aid you to the best settings. Hope this helped. TTYL

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