By default Windows is not optimised for high speed broadband connections. This can cause slow access when accessing international sites (from Australia) or even when accessing local sites. There are a number of applications which can adjust TCP/IP settings in Windows to improve performance. These applications generally modify the registry on Windows, so use them at your own risk.

I decided to see what sort of performance gains this could render by testing this on my work desktop.  I have not adjusted these settings in the past.

The first application I tested was DrTCP, the application was easy to download and did not require and  installation, however required me to manually modify the settings.  I wasn’t sure what to adjust, so I decided to find an application which would do the guessing work for me!

Eventually I came across SG TCP Optimizer, like DrTCP, TCP Optimizer is free.  I downloaded and was able to run the application without having to install anything.  After opening the application I just selected the speed that our office ADSL 2+ connection syncs at, and then selected the optimal settings radio button at the bottom of the page, and hit apply changes.  After doing this I rebooted my computer.

The Results:

Local performance increased marginally (5-12%) on large file downloads, however interntional performance increased significantly.  Average download speeds from US sites used to be 100KB/s, and now I’m easily hitting 330+KB/s on single threaded downloads.  This modification was well worth the effort!