The Guide - Slow downloads? Put your modem connection on steroids!

Tweak MTU

	Introduction
	What the heck is an MTU?
	The Nitty-Gritty: Changing your MTU
	The Nitty-Gritty (cont'd)
	User Testimonials
3.	EasyMTU

Related Links

1.	TweakDUN- -
2.	MTU Speed Pro
3.	EasyMTU

Slow downloads? Put your modem connection on steroids!:

What the heck is an MTU?

MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit. Lets cut out the geek talk and make it as simple as possible.

Imagine the Internet to be one huge parcel delivery company, with you, the user being the receiver and the server on the Internet being the sender. Like all delivery companies there is a limit to the weight that can be sent. Now server wants to send you a some data (the item) through the the Internet to you. In ideal circumstances, the whole package arrives even though it exceeds the weight limit. But the world is never ideal, so the server has to break the package into smaller fragments and send them individually to you so that the weight of each package does not exceed the weight limit.

Now the weight limit of the delivery company is the MTU .Any data exceeding the MTU gets fragmented and has to be resent by server to you and as you can see, this transmission of data back and forth increases and ultimately leads to low download speeds.

Now our aim to get the reduce the weight the packages so that the least amount of packages are used and non are sent back to the sender because they are over weight ie to find the right MTU setting and prevent fragmentation of data.

But why blame it on Microsoft ????

The developers of Windows have optimized the MTU settings for LAN's. But not everybody is connected to a LAN. Most of the users use their modems to hook up to the Internet so they have to change the MTU to match that of a dial-up connection. Windows uses a default MTU of 1500. But the MTU of the Internet ranges from 576 to 1500 depending upon the ISP.

But how does changing it help me ????

Setting the correct MTU prevents fragmentation of data sent by the server and as the data does not get fragmented, the data is does not have to be retransmitted and thus speeds up the connection and the download speeds by nearly 50% and reducing the time nearly by half. Thus this simple tweak not only makes the connection very much faster but saves your precious money, online.

The Nitty-Gritty: Changing your MTU