How to increase your internet connection speed for wow. (a better way)

[PerzianPenguin]

Although DNS pinging works, it still doesnt bring out that boost you really need.

Windows it self reserves 20% of YOUR bandwith, with some very simple tweaks you can get that extra 20% in your favor.

If you are running vista HOME PREMIUM or HOME BASIC then use this method:
http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=28798&mode=threaded&pid=201642

Now for XP and any other vistas:
http://astahost.com/info.php/increase-bandwidth-by-20percent_t12273.html

The reason it doesnt work on vista home premium is because on those editions of vista the GPedit.exe is not present.

no matter which method you use, enabling tcpackfrequency in your windows registry, highly reduces your latency in World of Warcraft, Overall online browsing, And alot of other online games.
Simply run this script, you can check it, there is no malicous codes or anything. Check it if you dont belive me.
Im giving you this script because some people do not understand how to regedit and may screw up there computer.

So to enable tcpackfrequency: download http://files.racs.com.au/_WOW/SetAckTick.vbs
and then simply run it.

For more information on that, check out, http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3271183880&sid=1&pageNo=1

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

[PerzianPenguin]

Some input please?



Bumping your thread after 30 minutes? No, Stop doing stupid shit. Read the rules before you get yourself banned.
-Svpernova09

[Monk3yv]

Can someone confirm or disprove this before I start doing something stupid. I just don't trust you, no offense :P

[PerzianPenguin]

None Taken, haha.
Im still new to the community.
But i guarentee this.
This stuff works wonders.
no need to buy a 100 dollar EVGA networking card hehe.

[thinus]

Quoted from the discussion thread of one of the links:


hehehe... this guy has me cracking up !!!!

this is the second time i busted his ass for dishing out tweaks that wont help a darn thing.

take a look: http://www.astahost.com/increase-hard-disk...003-t12331.html



here is the real deal:

QUOTE

This applies to Windows 2000 SP4, XP Professional + 2003.
Does NOT apply to Windows 2000 Pre-SP2 or XP Home.
Unfortunately this so called "bug" and its "fix" are just another urban
myth. :-(


THE MYTH:

It seems Microsoft reserves/wastes 20% of your internet/network bandwidth for
the QoS (Quality of Service) Packet Scheduler, even if this service is
disabled.
To increase your overall bandwidth do this:
1. Log in as Administrator.
2. Click the Start button -> Run -> type gpedit.msc -> hit Enter or click OK.
3. Go to Local Computer Policy -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> QoS
Packet Scheduler.
4. In the right hand pane double-click on "Limit reservable bandwidth".
5. On the Setting tab check the Enabled box.
6. Change "Bandwidth limit %" to read 0.
7. Click OK and close gpedit.msc.
8. Go to Start -> My Computer -> My Network Connections -> View Network
Connections -> right-click on your connection -> select Properties (where your
protocols are listed) -> make sure QoS Packet Scheduler is enabled.
9. Reboot for these changes to take effect.



THE TRUTH:

Microsoft does NOT reserve NOR use ANY amount/percentage of your bandwidth for
the QoS Packet Scheduler, UNLESS the QoS service is actively
transmitting/receiving ANY data/packets between your computer (which MUST use
a QoS aware program) and the QoS enabled internet/network.
This is achieved through a series of PATH and RESV refresh messages sent back
and forth over the connection.
Therefore this is NOT a "bug" and its so called "fix" above is NOT necessary!
Learn more about QoS from the "horse's mouth":
- MSKB: Windows XP QoS Enhancements and Behavior:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316666
- MSKB: QoS Traffic Control in Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=233203
- MSKB: Description of Reservation State in RSVP:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=244910


FYI:
"This does NOT increase bandwidth whatsoever, UNLESS your network
administrator (I have yet to find any companies using QoS) is running on a QoS
enabled network, and in this case you want it enabled anyway, to allow your PC
to take advantage of this service of higher quality packets."


sorry to the author. - its not personal. but... keep it real.

regards brianhot.

[PerzianPenguin]

personally i disagree with the above poster.
Because my latency has gone down 150ms.

Im actually able to dualbox now.
So instead of posting, why not give it a shot!

[Gares]

I did the TCPackfrequency edit myself in the registry (Vista 64 here) and my MS went from like 150-175 to like 40ms....I did this like back in August

So take it as you will.

[thinus]

personally i disagree with the above poster.
Because my latency has gone down 150ms.

Im actually able to dualbox now.
So instead of posting, why not give it a shot!

Because running downloaded scripts and making registry changes are not something I do just to "give it a shot".

[PerzianPenguin]

CHECK THEM!
LOOK AT WHAT THEY DO!
LOOK AT THE LINKS IVE PROVIDED!
:O


Caps lock is cruise control for BANNINATION-Svpernova09

[thinus]

CHECK THEM!
LOOK AT WHAT THEY DO!
LOOK AT THE LINKS IVE PROVIDED!
:O

I read the links. Did you? I posted the rebuttal to the 20% bandwidth reserved myth you posted and it was from one of the links you provided.
Typing in all caps doesn't make your point more valid in any way.

But I guess this ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=198589&highlight=#post198589') says everything that needs to be said.

[JoeWunsch]

Ok.

About 18 months ago I switched servers, and while my old server my latency was always around 150, the new server was always around 250-260, and made playing a pain in the ass because I was not used to this lag delay in casting spells, /following, etc.

I looked online for ways to lower your ping, and found these registry edits.

I did the changes and my ping dropped by over 100. I can verify it was not just a 'visual' change, in that you are just seeing a lower ping number -- because the change was drastic on my end. I was no longer experiencing lag when casting spells resulting in spells not being cast all at once but you see the 5 LB's hit the target all spread out over a few milliseconds.

So I don't know about all these technical reasons on why it wouldn't work, all I can say is I felt and saw a difference in the way my 5 characters played.

[PerzianPenguin]

that would be a viable claim.
if i had a myspace.
The only social networking site i was ever apart of, was Xanga, which i have long left as most of my friends went to myspace.

Off topic. Did you seriously read the rules? I'm up late, editing your posts cause you didn't read the rules?
-Svpernova09

[TeamGrizzly]

Tried manually editing the registry as taughted in WoW forums and my latency is GREEN for the first time so I can testify that the method works. In terms of gameplay, not much difference though. Maybe I don't feel the effects cos I do not PVP. Anyway, no harm trying. If you do not like it, just delete the additional parameter from registry and revert back to where you started.

[cryinsham]

playing on us servers from Korea and now Germany I can say the tcpack fix does work as far as QoS scheduling i never tried it.

[Los]

But does just the latency number go down, or is the general 'feel' of lag and gameplay actually improving?

[mikekim]

the QoS is not relevant to home networks unless you are running VOIP phones or streaming video for Cameras.

the TCPackfrequency registry change on the other hand does work. I did this a couple of months ago and my latency went from 200-250 to under 50

[zanthor]

TCPAck does help with lowering your PING, it also takes MORE bandwidth creating a higher potential for bottlenecks if you are choked already. (Such as running 5 clients on a low bandwidth provider.)

All said and done PerzianPenguin ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=User&userID=24115') appears to be posting 80-90% unsubstantiated crap and having people use tools that the average user really shouldn't be screwing with. You jack around in the registry without knowing exactly what you are doing and you can turn your hack attempt into a nice long reload of windows. GPEdit is exactly the same, you can screw things up so bad so fast. None of his advice is coming with a warning of "Hey you may brick your system if you do this wrong..." and it's all sensationalized in his presentation style.

Lose the caps lock.
Post some supporting evidence.
Warn people that these changes may have a negative impact.

Oh, and use the search function... The TCPAck hack has been discussed here at length already.

[Nisch]

Although DNS pinging works,

:rolleyes: You're like a spammer pushing out penis enlargement ads.

You say things work without any logical backing.

You need to stop the bullshit.

Pinging (ICMP) and DNS (UDP 53) have nothing to do with your TCP WoW connection.

If it does...........your ISP or your computer sucks.

Also, how are you supposed to give people confidence when you can't even spell "their" correctly?

Someone needs to ban this idiot before he causes someone more harm than good.

Here's a real good example showing the OP doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

He expects you to mess with your registry and that DNS pinging works when he doesn't even know what NAT is (a fundamental in any networking environment)

Can't get two wow's connected to same server ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=196636#post196636')

[Taliesin]

I also assert that this "fix" does not work as described. The bandwidth allocation for QoS services are only set aside when the network is set up to make use of it. And the purpose of this is actually to improve your performance in most situations even when it is enabled. Unless you're playing on a network with QoS services enabled, then the bandwidth is not touched.

Also consider that you are talking about 20% of the bandwidth of the NIC, not your internet connection, as broadband connections are usually managed by a separate modem or on a host server and not directly inside by your PC. Typical NIC speeds are 10/100 Mbps. Let's assume you are only connected at 10 Mbps. A broadband connection is somewhere between 256 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps. So you're telling me that shaving 2 Mbps off the NIC speed has a significant effect on about .5 Mbps of the remaining 8 Mbps that is largely unused as well? And this is for high-end connection speeds.

The other possibility is that you are playing over dial-up with the modem in your gaming machine, in which case there is no NIC to manage. Besides the fact that QoS should now be disabled and no allocation taking place, the limitations you experience have more to do with connection speed, line quality, and service provider than anything else.

Best case scenario is you are inadvertently disabling other features in your system that may be related to IP management, causing some other unknown affect on system performances. Maybe you boosted IP traffic somehow, but at the cost of what else? I need specifics of what I just disabled in my machine before I start blindly disabling services. Maybe I'm just paranoid....

[Caspian]

Regarding the TCPAck change - not the QoS hack
But does just the latency number go down, or is the general 'feel' of lag and gameplay actually improving?I did this manually over the weekend, my dad did too. There was a noticeable difference in game play. Any of you that software box I am sure have noticed that if your dudes are just standing there and you jump, the dude jumps on his own client then the other dudes jump. That is a direct effect of your latency. If it was zero all would jump at the same time. With my my latency went from ~280ms to about 80. And there was a noticeable difference in "jump coordination". The biggest place I saw this difference was in the Arget Tournament Mounted combat. If I PvP'd I suspect I would see a difference there as well. If you read the what the TCPackfrequency does, dropping ~200ms is exactly what should have happened. By default it queues ACKs up to 200ms trying to send 2 at once. Making the change causes it to immediately ACK every packet. so you should see a drop in 200ms if you do it.

These are the references I used to make the change (from the email I sent to my dad). Make sure to reboot after. I would never run an unsolicited VB script. I probably wouldn't run a solicited one either. Registry editing can be very dicey (I hate the registry, worst thing every invented for computers) but this is a pretty simple change and the instructions can be had straight from Microsoft.

I also strongly recommend following the procedure to back up your registry (see below) and even printing out the procedure to restore your registry if you do not have a second computer to look it up in the event of a disaster.





http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328890/
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=4665621068



Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell
you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur
if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you
follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the
registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a
problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore
the registry, click the following article number to view the article in
the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 322756

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ )
How to back up and restore the registry in WindowsSubkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\<Interface GUID>

Entry: TcpAckFrequency

Value Type:
REG_DWORD, number

Valid Range:
0-255

Default:
2

Description:
Specifies the number of ACKs that will be outstanding before the
delayed ACK timer is ignored. Microsoft does not recommend changing the
default value without careful study of the environment. For more
information, visit the following Microsoft Web page: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/823ca085-8b46-4870-a83e-8032637a87c81033.mspx?mfr=true
(http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/823ca085-8b46-4870-a83e-8032637a87c81033.mspx?mfr=true ('http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/823ca085-8b46-4870-a83e-8032637a87c81033.mspx?mfr=true%20%28http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/823ca085-8b46-4870-a83e-8032637a87c81033.mspx?mfr=true') )
If you set the value to 1, every packet is acknowledged
immediately because there is only one outstanding TCP ACK as a segment is just
received. The value of 0 (zero) is not valid and is treated as the default, 2.
The only time the ACK number is 0 is when a segment is not received and the
host is not going to acknowledge the data. Formatting - looks better now that is basically quoting myself.

[aboron]

First, make sure all your network cards are gig-e. This is not mandatory for QoS, but why gimp your access to your home file server (you do have one of those right).
Next, get a decent QoS capable smart switch like this: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=2&pid=324 ('http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=2&pid=324')
Now build a dedicated computer with multiple network cards and linux OS for use as firewall/QoS manager.
Then install Shorewall firewall configuration and QoS tools.
Finally, set up the firewall however you prefer and setup "tcrules" similar to this:



# Shorewall version 4 - Tcrules File
# For information about entries in this file, type "man shorewall-tcrules"
# See http://shorewall.net/traffic_shaping.htm for additional information.
# For usage in selecting among multiple ISPs, see
# http://shorewall.net/MultiISP.html
# See http://shorewall.net/PacketMarking.html for a detailed description of
# the Netfilter/Shorewall packet marking mechanism.
################################################## #############################
#MARK SOURCE DEST PROTO DEST SOURCE USER TEST LENGTH TOS CONNBYTES HELPER
# PORT(S) PORT(S)

# Any service that should run better than a torrent
6 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 21,80,110,443,8080
6 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp - 21,80,110,443,8080

# My desktop (I have priority for bandwidth over anyone else in the house, it's good to be the king ;-)
5 10.0.0.120 0.0.0.0/0
5 0.0.0.0/0 10.0.0.120

# Medium speed rules (remote access/desktop and dns server)
4 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 22,53,5900,5901,3389
4 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp - 22,53,5900,5901,3389
4 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 53

# Gaming rules (wow)
3 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp 3724

# High speed rules (services provided by the firewall itself to the outside world)
2 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 tcp

# VoIP rules (highest priority to prevent breakups in calls)
1 $FW 0.0.0.0/0 udp
1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp 5060

# IMCP request/response rules to let the pings all fly through ASAP, so we get accurate results even when the connection is being used heavily
1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmp echo-request
1 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmp echo-reply

#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE


If you use WoW voice chat or ventrilo you can add rules for them in group 1 or 2.

Also, if you have no idea what i'm talking about, stop messing with your computer settings and go back to playing the game already.

[Taliesin]

Disclaimer: I'm making the following comments based on my semi-informed knowledge of IP packets and personal opinions based on informed gleamed from Microsoft information. I haven't had practical experience in application of these principles on a Windows machine. I'm just doing my research before "trying" things. Also, excuse the nerdiness below.

With that said.....

The TCPAckFrequency actually does have some merit (I only responded to the QoS change in my last post). Windows attempts to wait for two packets to arrive (set in the registry) before sending an ACK response to the sender. It has the purpose of trying to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done, and reduce bandwidth consumption. The issue is that the wait for the second packet is allowed up to 200ms, by default, before Windows goes ahead and sends the ACK response, which causes latency. The occurance of this kind of delay should be pretty low though, so these 200ms delays should not be occurring very frequently.

So its a bandwidth vs. latency balancing act. Reducing the TCPAckFrequency to a value of 1 should reduce latency, but result in increased outgoing (upload) packets. ACK packets are fairly small, though, relatively speaking. Because you're now delving into incoming packet frequency as a basis of possible response tweaks, results are going to be highly dependent on your ISP network connection to the source. Layman's terms: results will vary, you could have a significant boost, or little affect at all. For most people, you're likely to see a boost to gaming (personal opinion).

Given that upload speeds on most connections tend to be much lower than download speeds, you are increasing load on the weaker part of your internet connection. So keep that in mind. Again, for most people, you probably are not taxing your upload capacity unless you're hosting torrents or something in the background, which is just silly to do in the first place.

As Caspian pointed out, I would at the very least backup the registry before making any changes. The value change to just TCPAckFrequency from 2 to 1 should be rather safe to make, as it doesn't change the ACK response at all, just sends more of them, at worst only affecting your network connection and not system performance. I may give this a shot and monitor network performance. I'm interested in the effect on increased [upload] bandwidth I hypothesize that I should see. I would expect it to be fairly small, if so, but that's just a guesstimation on my part.

Don't suppose anyone else has practical experience in this kind of area?

EDIT: Did just search the other threads on here (sorry, my bad!). Sounds like the ElitistJerks comments about this basically backs up my understanding of the changes. I'll stop posting here about this.

[pjdell]

lol poor OP got bombed for trying to help people out.

I think i will go ahead and try these...