By default windows XP and Vista will actually limit how many half open connections your computer can have open at a time. A half open connection refers to when you are trying to connect to a network but you need to wait for that network to respond giving you the go ahead. This can become a problem when you want to open multiple connections at the same time. If you want to run any sort of Peer 2 Peer file sharing applications this can drastically affect your transfer rates and the speed at which your are able to connect to peers.
Lets say your computer is still set up in the default settings. When you try and transfer a file in the P2P program you will have a maximum of 10 half open connections at a time. So when your program returns to you a list of 50 peers, you can only try to connect to 10 of them at a time. This means that before you can connect to all 50 peers you have to wait for the first 10 to respond then the next ten, and so on. Where as if you were able to attempt all 50 at once you would automatically connect and start downloading to the peers that respond quickly while still waiting for the rest to respond. With a limitation of only 10 half open connections you might be waiting for slow servers to respond for a while before even trying to connect to the faster servers or users.
In this article I will show you how to open up more of these connections on your computer enabling faster transfer rates and teach you how to optimize this number for your computer. You may think that if I set this number to infinity then you will get unlimited transfer rates, but this is not true. The reality is that more connections after a certain point can actually reduce the speed of your computer as it will get bogged down with too much information all at once.
Although if your really know what you are doing you can adjust the number manually yourself, but the easiest way to adjust it is with a patch. The patch is found here:
http://www.lvllord.de/?lang=en&url=downloads
It's a simple DOS based program that will write to your TCPIP.sys file. If you are at all apprehensive about messing anything up then copy and back up this file first It's really easy to use, just download it, run it then set the number of half-open connections you will allow. That's it. Simple right?
By default the program is set to adjust your new limit to 50, this is probably okay for most people. For those of you really looking to get the most out of this adjustment then you can increase this number a bit but there are a few things to consider.
1) How fast is your computer? The higher the number of half-open connections you allow, the more resources your computer will need to handle them, cranking this number up a couple hundred will require more from all parts of your computer and will actually slow it and your transfer rates down. Instead of devoting the most resources to your full connections and downloading the new file they are spent on opening new connections. With a fast computer your can stretch this number up a bit (maybe another 100). Trial and error will dictate if your computer can handle it.
2) Are you on a router? Chances are your router can only hold so many full connections and half open connections at a time. When you reach your max your router will likely crap out and disable or reset all your connections on the network. This value for the routers can vary depending on the quality of your router. For your average cheap home router you can probably handle a combined total of about 250 connections for everyone on your network at a given time. If for instance you have 4 or 5 computers doing P2P on your router 50 half open connection is probably about all it can handle after you factor in the actual number of full connections each computer might have(this can be a lot too).
3) Your internet connection isn't likely a large factor in this but if you have a super fast computer with no router you still might see some limitations with your internet connection as either the company you are with will not allow that many open connections or they can't handle it. All that is likely to happen in this case is your connection disconnects then attempts to reconnect.
Happy surfing!
Geoffrey Vaughan - High School Teacher and Web Developer. Owner and operator of http://www.MrVaughan.com - Resources for for High School students and teachers in the area's of Computers and Technology.
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