I recently upgraded my wireless connection from a B to an N, and I’ve noticed that some applications I use from time to time – VOIP and Bittorrent, specifically – don’t seem to work as rapidly as they did on my old router, ostensible upgrade be damned. So I’ve been tweaking a ton of settings on my router trying to fix it, occasionally encountering some success… when it dawned on me that my “successes” were all coming right about midnight. (I found this out by noticing that the fixes that were so stupendous in the wee hours of the night no longer worked during the evening, nor were they truly necessary to get improved performance).
I’ve also recently switched over to a laptop which runs Vista (sadly – I really liked XP), and so I’m wondering – might there be some hidden service Vista runs that could be causing my reverse Cinderella situation? I thought it might be the QoS Packet Scheduler, which as I understand it always reserves some bandwidth for Windows Update :rolleyes:, but disabling that in my Wireless Connection’s Properties has had no noticeable effect.
So, is there something under services.msc (or wherever) that could be causing this that I could change, or can it only be the result of my ISP shaping traffic?
ETA: I’m running Vista Home Premium, SP1, 64-bit version
Remember, even a hot 12Mb internet connection is only 12% of a 100Mb ethernet port, your PC can handle tons more data than your ISP will feed you.
More likely it is your ISP or depending on your ISP you might have a couple other high bandwidth neighbors bogging down the neighborhood. ISP’s are more than capable of dynamic throttling on users who suck up alot of bandwidth.
My wife recently got a Vista laptop and I remember noting as I mucked around with some settings that there IS an area where you can control the bandwidth used by certain programs. I’m pretty sure it’s not active by default though. Sorry I can’t be more specific.
Sounds like the TCP auto-tuning might be incompatible with your router. See this article.
There are a few things to try, including a restricted and disabled setting for TCP auto tuning:
-First, make sure that your firewall and router can support window scaling. Some devices from Linksys, Cisco, NetApp, SonicWall, Netgear, Checkpoint, D-Link were reported as having problems with window scaling. (Some of the incompatible devices are given here. You can check with the manufacturer or run the connectivity diagnostic suite (especially, TCP High Performance Test) provided by Microsoft to determine your gateway device’s compliance.
-Second, check with the manufacturer if a firmware update has been issued for your device that can fix the problem. Replace the problematic device or update the firmware as suggested by the manufacturer. If the router cannot be replaced or if it the device is remote (e.g., a firewall of your ISP or corporation)
-Third, If the problem still persists, you can restrict autotuning by running “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted” from the command prompt. We have found that restricted mode will often allow some of the benefits of autotuning with a number of problematic devices.
Lastly, if all else fails, in order to disable this feature, run “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled”.
(In order to reenable autotuning, run “netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal”.)
No, there’s no hidden service that would do this nor does it make sense to do this only with N.
My WAG is that the N router is using frequencies that are in use in your local area and you are experiencing packet loss or delayed resends. At around midnight the people in your local area are going to bed and putting their laptops away thus the decrease in interference. Not sure how N works exactly, as it uses multiple frequencies at the same time. There might be a way to try different frequencies.
Its also worth updating whatever driver the card uses or a firmware update for the router.
Another scenario, especially with bitorrent, is that the router just cant handle so many global connections. Try cutting them down in half in your torrent client.
>vQoS Packet Scheduler, which as I understand it always reserves some bandwidth for Windows Update
QoSPS implements QoS for the network interface. Its not a conspiracy. You can disable it.