Tuning up MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) to speed up Internet access.

This is an old one. I had tried it on Window 2000 as well. Now let me tell
you one important fact related with tuning. Value of MTU depends upon how
fast a connection you have, what kind of activities you perform (ask
yourself a question. Are your a mild, average or high end user of Internet
? To put it in other words, Do you download little or nothing, or are an
average surfer or are Internet savvy individual and download everything
from programs,apps,patches to watching Internet audio/video real-time
content?) Depending upon who you are as a user and what kind of connection
(modem,dsl,cable or in rare cases T1/T3), this tuning may have little to
significant effect on your Internet experience. All right MTU stand for
Maximum Transmission Unit. Value of MTU decides the size of Internet data
packet. Bigger the size, more you can transfer. Analogy could be made with
a bucket. If bucket is small, you can carry little but it would be no
strain on your strength. Bigger the bucket, more you can carry but it
strains your physical strength. (Well! Its not that simple but good enough
to understand). Objective should be find a perfect balance which works for
you. I think maximum that you can put is as value of MTU is 1500 (but could
be higher for your specific network) and it may not make sense making it
smaller than 68.
Again this is a registry tweak unless and until you have a tweaking utility
that can do it for you.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering
REGEDIT and Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interf
aces\ ID for Adapter. For this right click on right pane and add a key by
the name MTU. For this key you can add a DWORD value from 68 to 1500 (or
higher value is certain cases). If you put less than 68, it will default to
68. If you put a value higher than 1500 or your Network permitted max, it
will default to permitted max.
The MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) specifies the maximum transmission unit
size of an interface, and is usually determined by negotiation at the link
layer of the driver.
The upper level protocols normally optimize pack size for each medium.

Following table gives typical values of MTU in bytes:-
|Network Type |Windows XP MTU (bytes) |Windows NT / Windows |
| | |2000 MTU (bytes) |
|16 Mbps Token Ring |17914 |17914 |
|4 Mbits/Sec Token Ring |4464 |4464 |
|FDDI |4352 |4352 |
|Ethernet |1500 |1500 |
|IEEE 802.3/802.2 |1492 |1492 |
|X.25 |576 |576 |
|PPPoE (WAN Miniport) |1480 |N/A