Information on 'Tweaking' your TCP stack
Registry 101This is a visual guide to modification of the Windows 98 Registry, using REGEDIT. In this example, we are going to find the right place for, and enter, the famous DefaultRcvWindow speed optimization registry key, but the steps here can be applied to finding and modifying or adding any Registry value.
In this example, we're setting the DefaultRcvWindow to 65535, which is a value that without knowing more about your connection speed and typical ping time, is going to get you pretty close to the best speed you can get.
By the way, the correct way to think of the registry is a big file that holds most (but not all) of the little configuration variables for windows that Bill could not write user interfaces for. Instead of storing all these settings in individual files and in human readable form, Microsoft decided to invent a new file format, unreadable except via their tools, and prone to accidental corruption as well, and store almost everything in there! Good one!
Like most things in windows 98/NT, changes to critical settings dont 'take' until you reboot.
Registry changes are done using a program called REGEDIT. The easiest way to get to REGEDIT is via the Start button
Start, Run, Regedit, then press return.
Up comes the Regedit window!
Before making any changes to your registry, backup the original one
Ok so now we're at regedit. See those little squares with plus marks in them? clicking on them once with the left mouse button EXPANDS to show the children of that section of the registry. The registry is like a large tree, with 'My Computer' at the root.
Here we clicked the plus to the left of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Keep clicking on down!
At the bottom of the Regedit window, is your current position, starting with My Computer. Keep opening sub-folders until it looks like this! The ReceiveWindow option lives in the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VXD\MSTCP, which holds some of the initialization values for the Microsoft TCP Stack.
Now we're at the place were the ReceiveWindow goes.
Windows 98: Check if the DefaultRcvWindow key already exists! if it does not, ensure that MSTCP is highlighed, then create it, using the Edit->New->String Value menu option. If it does exist, DELETE IT (click once to hilite the word, then press the DELETE keyboard key), then create it as above.
Windows 95 that has not been updated: The key is stored as a DWORD (maximum 65535).. create a new DWORD entry for DefaultRcvWindow rather than a String entry... or, get your Windows95 patched to WINSOCK2 .. support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q182/1/08.asp
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Now you need to enter the name.
Ok so we've typed the name, now press return
Double-click the name you added, to get the Edit String sub-window up.
Enter the value data. Without quotes.
The final window will look something like this.
REBOOT for any change you made to be used.
Good luck on the speed tests!
Using Regedit FIND
Starting back at My Computer, select it with a single click, then use Edit->Find to look for MTU keys in the whole tree.
Searching the registry can take a long time.
If the find has matched on an irrelevant string, use Find->Next to continue.
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