Win XP Pro/2000 bandwidth trick

[»1587200]

A nice little tweak for XP Pro. MS reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes (suspect for updates and interrogating your machine etc..)

 

Here's how to get it back:

Click Start-->Run-->type: gpedit.msc

 

This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:

Local Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QOS Packet Scheduler-->Limit Reservable Bandwidth

 

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab.

"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."

So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%. Works on XP Pro, and 2000.

[JoWie]

this is a myth, if that 20% isn't used, it is available for any application.

 

It is not 'reserved' until it is used, ex auto updates

 

As in Windows 2000, programs can take advantage of QoS through the QoS APIs in Windows XP. One hundred percent of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a program specifically requests priority bandwidth. This "reserved" bandwidth is still available to other programs unless the requesting program is sending data. By default, programs can reserve up to an aggregate bandwidth of 20 percent of the underlying link speed on each interface on an end computer. If the program that reserved the bandwidth is not sending sufficient data to use it, the unused part of the reserved bandwidth is available for other data flows on the same host.

[L.C.]

Does this only apply to auto updates? I mean if you don't use any of Microsoft's online services, it might not hurt to turn this off. :X I tried "uninstalling" QoS for my ethernet, and instead it made my latency in games worse. However this looks kind of different, so I'll give it a try and experiment switching around 0% and 50%, even though this is a myth. I have the time to experiment and observe for myself. Thanks.