So then, you’ve got the “Fastest Package” for the Verizon FiOS ultra high-speed fiber optic. A whooping 50 Mbps download speed and a 20 Mbps upload speed! That means 802.11b WiFi routers won’t even be able to handle those speeds! Nevertheless, that possible 11 Mbps bottleneck should not be your only concern. If you’re going to be utilizing a number of network intensive applications (*coughGnuettllaEmuleBittorrent*) you’ll need to make some other adjustments to your hardware and software network setup. This is one of many things you can do to optimize the network. However, it is the first thing I try to remember when setting up any node or router on my home network.

Possible Names

This setting has many names. You can look for “Maximum Ports,” “Maximum Number of Connections,” “Max Active Links,” “Max Half-open/Duplex Concurrent Connections,” etc. Like the names imply, this setting controls how many connections can be established between nodes. Why is this important? It allows the client computer to contact many more server hosts at the same time. Off the top of my head, this would be beneficial to multi-segment download managers programs like DownThemAll!, Internet browsers (especially with multiple tabs), and (lower voice) P2P file sharing programs.

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I don’t know if it’s just me but I think motherboard manufactures changed the way that they handle integrated video memory. I like to buy a new computer every year. Every year around Black Friday, I buy a system on sale and sell my old one on eBay. I think it’s a pretty good setup. You buy the cutting edge equipment and sell what you have before its features phase out of popularity.

Speed Fetish

I do this because I have an obsession with performance. I like to make sure my computers work efficiently. Unfortunately, most computers out of the box are not optimized for performance. They are manufactured with the dumb does-not-know-any-better home user in mind.

Typical performance-boosting tasks I carry out with every new computer I own include doubling the memory, terminating the system restore “feature,” disabling the swap file, and uninstalling the superfluous, “complimentary,” memory-hogging, thread-wasting programs set up by the computer OEM manufacturer. For those who can empathize with me, I absolutely hate WildTangent.

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When I was in high school, I used to be involved in the desktop publishing department. Essentially, I was a yearbook geek. In most places, you receive your yearbook towards the last month of school. I’ve even heard of some schools distributing yearbooks from the previous year in August! In addition to the regular yearbook, our academy released a “pre-yearbook” in the first month of school so we can get used to all the (few) new faces. I’ve also attended other institutions with a similar publication. They called it “The Dating Catalog” or “The Mugshots.” We called ours the “JCA Buddy List.” That year, we designed the pages in sharp color as opposed to the previous year’s blurry black-and-white.

When the cutting-edge design was complete, I went into production. It took forever to print my “Buddy List!” “Forever” comprised of a whole 15 minutes. I checked the “Print Status” window and discovered the problem. Each side of the page I sent to the printer was at least 50 MB large! It wasn’t actually the printing that took long but the sending of the data. We used a high-grade laser printer. Printing one page took approximately 5 seconds. But sending the data via USB 1.0 cable - which is capable of “fantastic” burst speeds of 12 Mbps - took at least 1 minute!

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