Mac Forum / General / Networking / June 2005

I have the "slow" FIOS service and I love it. Reliable and fast.

First, my advice is to drop back to the 5 Mb/sec service unless you plan
to run a server. There's very little benefit to the faster service
since, for single sources, ie, web pages, you're just going to be
limited by a bottleneck on the server end or somewhere else on the net.

Second, if you're hardwired with 10/T ethernet, then you won't ever go
faster than 10 mebabits/second anyway, and typically you'll only get
half that. You need 100/T to have any chance of benefiting from 15
Mb/sec.

Third, to answer the tcp/ip tuning question, see versiontracker for
IPNetTuner. Tinkertool System will also do network tuning. There are
terminal commands that will do the same thing, but it is complicated.
Finally, see "Broadband Optimizer" on versiontracker, which is free and
probably just what you want.

Fourth, for the way most people use the internet, DNS latency is as (or
more) important than raw bandwidth. There are things you can do to try
and reduce latency, but they are complex and I've never been convinced
they help anyway.

The synopsis here is that -every- point in the communications pipe has
to be set up for high speed or you'll just be limited by a different
bottleneck. I think that some (probably most) of the bottlenecks are
beyond your control anyway, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

One problem is that the Mac by default sets ethernet MTU to
1500.  The PPPoE Verizon uses claims 8 bytes, and each packet
then has to be transmitted as two packets by the router.
You have to do some manual configuration to set MTU to 1492
(or 1456  - I have seen this recommended, but do not know why).

This probably will not get you a huge improvement though.
A second problem is the internet itself.  How are you measuring
your speed?  The speed-test server may not be able to test to
15 MB, and network connections from there to your machine may
not handle such high speeds.  One connection that has a max
or 5 or 6 MB for any reason, and you are bottlenecked at
5 or 6 MB.

Note that the speed-test server and the nature of the links
traversed is more important than distance.  I am physically
located close to MAE-East and if I test using a computer
close to MAE-West I may get much faster transfers Northern
Virginia-Silicon Valley than if I access a computer in
Richmond 100 miles away.  There are some computers in Chicago
that respond quite well, too, while the UK speed-test
servers may bounce all over the place, depending on network
congestion on the link across the pond.

YMMV.

jim b.

As someone else recommended Broadband Optimizer is the way to go.  It
will run the terminal commands needed automatically.  I have seen Fios
for myself in action on the wintel side.  Very impressive indeed.  I
have Comcast gold service which clips along at 6mbps.  I was averaging
about 2.5mbps before using BBO which took me up to over 5mbps.  My
neighborhood was just recently  fiber wired and I definitely intend to
give it a shot once we are offered service.  I have a dual 867 mirrored
door G4 with 100T so I expect to get full throttle from 15mbps.  As for
news servers I would go back to Giganews.  That's what I use and I find
their reliability and retention unsurpassed.