Increase bandwidth by tweaking QoS in Windows XP
Pro
The following tweak applies only to Windows XP Professional
edition.
The default system behavior is that all 100% bandwidth is
available, however, if there is a running application that
indicates to the OS it needs to send high priority/real time data,
then as long as it has the socket open, Windows XP will restrict
“best effort” traffic to 80% of the bandwidth so that high priority
traffic can be accommodated. Basically, applications can make this
request to the operating system for QoS support using the QoS
application programming interfaces (APIs) in Windows and this only
applies if a specific app is requesting QoS.
If you'd like to change how much bandwidth is reserved for QoS (the
default is 20% of the total bandwidth), do the following:
1. Make sure you're logged in as "Administrator" (not just any
account with admin privileges).
2. Navigate to START>Run and type: gpedit.msc
3. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Administrative Templates
> Network > QOS Packet Scheduler
4. In the right window, double-click the limit reservable bandwidth
setting
5. On the setting tab, check the enabled setting.
6. Where it says "Bandwidth limit %", change it to read 0 (or
whatever percentage you want to reserve for high priority QoS
data)
7. Click OK, close gpedit.msc
Under START > My Computer > My Network Connections > View
Network Connections, right-click on your connection and under
Properties (where it lists your protocols), make sure QOS Packet
Scheduler is enabled.
The tweak desribed below helps boost priority for DNS &
hostname resolution in general. What this means is, it helps web
pages load faster, and has negligible effect on downloads (not
counting the couple of ms gain with the host resolution at
connect-time).
Applying this tweak assumes some proficiency in editing the Windows
Registry using Regedit (Start > Run > type: regedit). As
always, backup your Registry before making any changes so you can
revert to the previous state if you don't like the results.