How to Speed Up your DSL Connection

Tap to Read ➤ Mukul Deshpande

The speed of a DSL connection can be many megabits per second. Read to know how to speed up your DSL connection.

A Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is a technology that provides access to the Internet by transmitting digital information over the local telephone network.

A user usually gets a much lower speed than the one advertised by the company. A plain old telephone service (POTS) splitter connects to a telephone jack in the wall, and separates the line into telephone and broadband.

A POTS splitter improves the quality of both voice and data. There can be problems with the speed if the data line is too long, or if there is a loose connection. Noise, which is interference from other devices, can also cause this problem. This article will give you a brief on how to speed up your DSL connection.

Improving the Speed

It is better if the user puts a POTS splitter at the demarcation point or the Network Interface Device (NID), which is installed by the phone company. This ensures that the quality of the data line from the ISP to the user's modem or router is superior. This is good, because the data does not go through the inside wiring.

The user should place his modem next to the POTS splitter at the NID so that the telephone company is responsible for the quality of the line. So, the central office at the telephone exchange can track the quality of the data line.

The user should also set up the Ethernet router next to the modem. He can then utilize a wireless extender to boost the signal. He can also use a HomePlug device, so the signal is transmitted through the walls.

Another way to increase speed is to create a region in the memory known as a buffer, for the network card used for the DSL connection. The size of the buffer can be between 4 MB and 8 MB or even more, if you have a lot of RAM. If you want to deactivate this buffer, put the letters 'REM' in the line containing the tweak.

To load a web page from the Internet, Windows resolves the host name (which is the domain name such as google.com) to an Internet Protocol (IP) address (which can be 216.239.51.99). This process is known as a DNS lookup.

The default setting for DNS is slow, so the user should change it. The user can search for addresses of fast DNS servers on the Internet, and enter those numbers in TCP/IP Properties section. This is a reliable way to make DSL faster.

The user should never use the CDs sent by the corresponding company. Also, he should not rely on management software. Instead, he should invest in a router to manage the network. Some ISPs don't allow the use of routers, because they want to monitor the user's activity on the web, which is okay.

This is because the only information the user needs from the ISP is the way to connect to the ISP's network and his username and password. It is better to use the Linux operating system than the Windows operating system. This can be done through PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) and PPPoA (Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM).

Another secret of boosting speed is to make the TCP receive window larger. The TCP receive window is the most number of bytes that can be transmitted, before an acknowledgment is required from the receiver. The delay caused when waiting for an acknowledgment lowers the speed.

You can measure MTU (maximum transmission unit) of your connection. Some tools allow you to verify the best MTU you have. The best MTU is the maximum size of the packet that can be sent. If the size of the packet is greater than MTU, then the packet is split up before it is sent and reunified by the receiver.

This process of splitting up and reunification lowers the speed. There are some tools that allow Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), which means one connection is shared by many computers in the same LAN.