How to increase your internet connection speed for wow. (a better way)

[aboron]

First, make sure all your network cards are gig-e. This is not mandatory for QoS, but why gimp your access to your home file server (you do have one of those right).
Next, get a decent QoS capable smart switch like this: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=2&pid=324
Now build a dedicated computer with multiple network cards and linux OS for use as firewall/QoS manager.
Then install Shorewall firewall configuration and QoS tools.
Finally, set up the firewall however you prefer and setup "tcrules" similar to this:

# Shorewall version 4 - Tcrules File
# For information about entries in this file, type "man shorewall-tcrules"
# See http://shorewall.net/traffic_shaping.htm for additional information.
# For usage in selecting among multiple ISPs, see
# http://shorewall.net/MultiISP.html
# See http://shorewall.net/PacketMarking.html for a detailed description of
# the Netfilter/Shorewall packet marking mechanism.
###############################################################################
#MARK   SOURCE          DEST            PROTO   DEST    SOURCE  USER    TEST    LENGTH  TOS   CONNBYTES         HELPER
#                                               PORT(S) PORT(S)

# Any service that should run better than a torrent
6       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       tcp     21,80,110,443,8080
6       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       tcp     -       21,80,110,443,8080

# My desktop (I have priority for bandwidth over anyone else in the house, it's good to be the king ;-)
5       10.0.0.120      0.0.0.0/0
5       0.0.0.0/0       10.0.0.120

# Medium speed rules (remote access/desktop and dns server)
4       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       tcp     22,53,5900,5901,3389
4       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       tcp     -       22,53,5900,5901,3389
4       $FW             0.0.0.0/0       tcp     53

# Gaming rules (wow)
3       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       tcp     3724

# High speed rules (services provided by the firewall itself to the outside world)
2       $FW             0.0.0.0/0       tcp

# VoIP rules (highest priority to prevent breakups in calls)
1       $FW             0.0.0.0/0       udp
1       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       udp     5060

# IMCP request/response rules to let the pings all fly through ASAP, so we get accurate results even when the connection is being used heavily
1       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       icmp    echo-request
1       0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0       icmp    echo-reply

#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE

If you use WoW voice chat or ventrilo you can add rules for them in group 1 or 2.

Also, if you have no idea what i'm talking about, stop messing with your computer settings and go back to playing the game already.

[Taliesin]

Disclaimer: I'm making the following comments based on my semi-informed knowledge of IP packets and personal opinions based on informed gleamed from Microsoft information. I haven't had practical experience in application of these principles on a Windows machine. I'm just doing my research before "trying" things. Also, excuse the nerdiness below.

With that said.....

The TCPAckFrequency actually does have some merit (I only responded to the QoS change in my last post). Windows attempts to wait for two packets to arrive (set in the registry) before sending an ACK response to the sender. It has the purpose of trying to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done, and reduce bandwidth consumption. The issue is that the wait for the second packet is allowed up to 200ms, by default, before Windows goes ahead and sends the ACK response, which causes latency. The occurance of this kind of delay should be pretty low though, so these 200ms delays should not be occurring very frequently.

So its a bandwidth vs. latency balancing act. Reducing the TCPAckFrequency to a value of 1 should reduce latency, but result in increased outgoing (upload) packets. ACK packets are fairly small, though, relatively speaking. Because you're now delving into incoming packet frequency as a basis of possible response tweaks, results are going to be highly dependent on your ISP network connection to the source. Layman's terms: results will vary, you could have a significant boost, or little affect at all. For most people, you're likely to see a boost to gaming (personal opinion).

Given that upload speeds on most connections tend to be much lower than download speeds, you are increasing load on the weaker part of your internet connection. So keep that in mind. Again, for most people, you probably are not taxing your upload capacity unless you're hosting torrents or something in the background, which is just silly to do in the first place.

As Caspian pointed out, I would at the very least backup the registry before making any changes. The value change to just TCPAckFrequency from 2 to 1 should be rather safe to make, as it doesn't change the ACK response at all, just sends more of them, at worst only affecting your network connection and not system performance. I may give this a shot and monitor network performance. I'm interested in the effect on increased [upload] bandwidth I hypothesize that I should see. I would expect it to be fairly small, if so, but that's just a guesstimation on my part.

Don't suppose anyone else has practical experience in this kind of area?

EDIT: Did just search the other threads on here (sorry, my bad!). Sounds like the ElitistJerks comments about this basically backs up my understanding of the changes. I'll stop posting here about this.

[pjdell]

lol poor OP got bombed for trying to help people out.

I think i will go ahead and try these...