This simple guide is for people using the Realtek onboard network cards, it could also be useful for other types of network cards. The aim is to decrease your ping times and increase stability to rule out any network problems from your side. However it does NOT take into account any other programs and/or viruses that may be causing network issues!
1:- Firstly it is a good idea to make sure you are using the latest drivers for the onboard NIC before changing any settings. These drivers should be taken from the motherboard manufacturer's website specific to your motherboard, if you don't know who manufactured your motherboard download
Belarc Advisor, a FREE program which lists your PC specs. You will find the make of your motherboard under the 'Main Circuit Board' section.
I have tried downloading the drivers from the network cards site and they seem to work better than the ones for my specific motherboard, this might be because my motherboard is getting older and the support for it will be reduced by the manufacturer. I have edited some pictures to correspond with the new drivers.
For example, my mother board is listed as "Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EX58-UD5".
With this information I would go to the Gigabyte website and search for the specific motherboard "EX58-UD5", once found I would then navigate to the drivers page and download the latest Realtek drivers and install them. A system reboot will usually be required after installation and is recommended.
Now the drivers are up-to-date we can look at the settings!
2:-
To start off with the settings I will list all the available options to me and their new settings, you may find some names to be different, more or even less options. - Auto Disable Gigabit - Disable
- Auto Disable PCIe - Disable
- Auto Disable PHY - Disable
- Flow Control - Disable
- Green Ethernet - Disable! [Previously set to Enabled]
- Interrupt Moderation - Disable! [Previously set to Enabled]
- IPv4 Checksum Offload - Rx & Tx Enable
- Jumbo Frame - Disable
- Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) - Enabled [Previously set to Disabled]
- Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) - Enabled [Previously set to Disabled]
- Network Address - Not Preset
- Priority & VLAN - Priorty & VLAN Disabled
- Receive Buffers - 512 (Max = 512, set to max)
- Receive Side Scaling - Enable (Enabled if you have a multi-core CPU)
- Shutdown Wake-On-Lan - Disable
- Speed & Duplex - 100Mbps Full Duplex [Previously set to Auto Negotiate]
- TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Rx & Tx Enable
- TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) - Rx & Tx Enable [Previously set to Disabled]
- Transmit Buffers - 128 (Max = 128, set to max)
- UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Rx & Tx Enable
- UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) - Rx & Tx Enable [Previously set to Disabled]
- Wake-On-Lan Capabilities - None
- WOL & Shutdown Link Speed - 100Mbps First
You can also change these network settings to the same as the following image:
If after changing any of these settings you find your connection to be poor or just not work you can find a list of default values here. I suggest you take note of these setting prior to changing anything!To change the settings do the following:Click Start > Settings > Network Connections. Right click on your active network adaptor and click 'Properties', this should bring up a 'Local Area Connection Properties' box. Go ahead and untick the settings as shown in the image above.
After that click 'Configure...', if you have an active connection it will warn you about losing connection when the settings are changed and applied. Click 'Yes' and the network card properties box should open, click on the 'Advanced' tab at the top and change the settings to the ones listed above. Once done click OK, at this point your connection will be dropped and should re-establish itself within a minute (usually a few seconds).
Try doing a speedtest/pingtest. I find doing a Command Promt pingtest to be better than using online sites. To do this click Start > Run > Type in "cmd" (Without the quotes) and press OK. In the command prompt type "ping -n 20 bbc.co.uk" this will ping the BBC website 20 times and give you a maximum, minimum and an average ping result. Please note with some of the wireless ISP's I have noticed the first 1-2 pings may time out and result in packet loss, I would disregard that and take into account the Max/Min/Average results only. Doing the ping test again usually doesn't result in the first 1-2 pings been lost.
I hope this helps, for me it reduced my ping times by about 10ms and made certain applications run a little smoother, i.e. video streaming.
Also if you disagree with any settings please post your choice of settings and an explained reason why you would use your setting, thanks!.
P.S. I was bored...
