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I have an unsual type of Broadband (Cable, DSL or Satellite) connection. How do I configure TweakMASTER?

TweakMASTER Knowledge Base article KB0035

Many people have reported astonishing improvements in download speeds using TweakMASTER with cable, DSL and satellite broadband connections. See some of our user comments on our rave reviews page.

If you have a broadband connection like Cable/DSL, you can simply run the TweakMASTER wizard and choose the ADSL/Cable modem option. That is a good place to start. If you don't get great results from just using the wizard, then you will want to try some other options.

Proceed to the "Internet Optimization" screen in TweakMASTER. For your broadband connection, you should have an "interface" on the dropdown list at the top which is used for that... typically some kind of Network card. Select that one and see what MTU is set to. The Wiazard should have set it to 1500. There are a few special circumstances where this may not apply (please see the section near the bottom of this email on that.)

You can experiment with other MTU settings... 1492 is one number to experiment with here. Or with it set to 1500, try the MTU probe to your ISP and see what number is returned and try that.

RWIN is the other key setting. Normally a broadband connection wants a very large RWIN while dialup connections prefer a smaller one. The Wizard should have set it to 256960 bytes for a 1500 MTU. But you can experiment here. Use the drop down list the in box labelled "Set to:" and try some of the other higher ones and see how your connection works.

This will take a little patience, but the results may be well worth it in the long run.

Special Circumstances

There are certain special circumstances where a standard combination of settings will not work. If yours is one of them, please read below about various situations which require special settings.

On an ADSL connection, for example, an MTU of 1500 may result in no connection at all. It must be set it to 1456 or lower because of NAT and PPTP.

Anyone who wants to have decent performance with NT Terminal Services will have to set MTU to somewhere around 1000.

Anyone on cable/DSL with PPPoE will want to set MTU to a value lower then 1500. Since all the users over the Ethernet share a common connection, the Ethernet principles supporting multiple users in a LAN combine with the principles of PPP, which apply to connections. 1492 is one number to experiment with here. Or with it set to 1500 try the MTU probe to your ISP and see what number is returned and try that.

Dialing up with a Linux box (using it as gateway) you would want to try running the TM wizard on a Windows machine, and use "dial-up" with "network adapter" (set 576 MTU to the network card). This has resulted in considerable speedup for some users.

Hopefully some of these hints wil help you.