MTU & RWIN tweaking still a good idea?

Radiation

Radiation

Radiation

Soldato
Joined
12 Oct 2003
Posts
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I remember a few years ago changing MTU and RWIN was a good idea before BT said they were going to sort their routers out to improve things, I presume this has been done ages ago but is it still worth changing these values to improve the connection?

When im downloading a big file from a website browsing becomes quite slow, i setup dns to be direct as i have already searched here and it was said to be a good idea instead of using the router to look it up, i think it might have helped a little but it seems like the new router i got a few months ago just doesn't share the bandwidth as well as the linux box i put together years ago did, why is this?

I looked at the options and it has QOS but im a bit unsure if it will be any good in this case?
 
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I tried QOS and unless i've set it up wrong it did nothing to help the situation, its annoying because the old linux box didn't have this problem, how am i supposed to browse when downloading without these long delays? :(

Thanks.
 
It really needs more detail, is it web browsing on the same box?

Cheap routers aren't brilliant at it, what linux setup were you using (smoothwall isn't brilliant at it either)?

to be honest though, if you're downloading a 100mb file and trying to browse on the same pc without traffic shaping of some kind (or QOS) it'll be slow. When you say you set up QOS, what exactly did you set up? It's complex to get right unless it's a very simple set up.
 
Sorry your right i should have added a bit more detail, my new router is a Safecom 5 Port Combo SPI Firewall ADSL2/2+ Modem Router part no. SART2-4115.

My old linux box used to run ipcop and had a speedtouch 330 usb modem which worked great and had more features than this new cheap safecom router but i wanted a smaller quiet and less power hungry setup.

The safecom is pretty good though and so far my only annoyance is the delays in browsing when downloading with it on one pc at the same time, i do miss using ipcop and not having the ability to cache stuff for ages but i felt it was time to change.

I have two pc's connected and i used a quick safecom guide here to set both up on the router with QOS high priority and minimum delay, i thought about trying to do ports but i can't see the use in limiting http because downloading and browsing come under that port. :confused:

Not sure what i need to do, thanks for any help.
 
well it looks fine, what the safecom seems to have is very basic QoS type functionality. I can't vouch for how good their kit is though.

I've only ever done this sort of thing with cisco or juniper (netscreen) kit so I can't really offer specific advice. If you've got a little spare cash I'd consider gettign a mini itx board and putting a small linux distro and ipcop on a compactflash and running that as the router. near silent, not too expensive and you know it works....

as I've said I've only done this at home by classifying traffic using acls and then applying ip precidence, which is way over the top really!

somebody else might have a better home solution...
 
Thanks i might consider going back but i hope i don't have to, there must be a solution as i've not explored QOS fully?

Also back to the original question, does anyone know if it is still a good idea to tweak the MTU and RWIN?
 
beyond setting MTU to 9000 if you have a gigabit network and large files to transfer I would leave it alone. it offers little benefit really. Thats my view anyway...
 
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