Large Upload Speed Difference between Firefox and IE 7

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

OK, I've now tested and tweaked all three of my workstations and made the same change to my server. In the case of each workstation, the upload was limited to 200-300 kb/sec before the tweak and went to between 800-1000kb/sec uploads with some occasional higher throughputs. All these numbers using http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123

I researched and tweaked a fair number of things, but only one seemed to affect this. The parameter is:

DefaultSendWindow

and it is set in the registry here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Parameters

Note the location. It is not in the TCPIP section of the registry. Also, none of my machines had this name in the registry. I had to add it.

it is a DWORD value. I ended up with a value of 78000 (in hex). If you want to find out more about this parameter, just do a Google search on DefaultSendWindow. There was a very long thread on a forum discussing tests done a few years back by a few DirecPC users to improve their upload speeds. Since EVDO also has relatively high RTT values, I figured a similar tweak should work and it indeed does appear to. Since this parameter sets the size of a buffer that determines when the winsock sending stops sending and waits for acknowledgments, it makes some sense as to why this would work. Also, it can be changed by an application by setting a socket option parameter, so that would explain how IE 7 could get this to happen only for itself.

I only did a few short FTP tests. FTP uploads were improved modestly (maybe 50% better), but I still need to send to an FTP server with a known adequate inbound bandwidth.

Upload tests using FF to a public site also improved with much higher peaks and modestly better average upload speeds, but not as high as the speed test sites.

Here's some other site tests I just ran:

OK, that's all for now. I'm tired and am going to bed.
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rickster · EVDO Junkie Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 216

Great work. You'll probably do this but I'll suggest anyway to post on FF forum and explain that IE seem to be getting around this default limitation.
I'm betting that since uploading through a browser, especially uploading large amounts is very atypical it's not something anyone looked at optimizing.
As a control did you also verify that Opera which you saw also have poor performance with respect to IE improved equally with this change?

rickster · EVDO Junkie Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 216

I also wonder that this is global and I assume across all interface connections (connecting your local machine to wired, or 802.11x) what affect tweaking this will have on them.

MorenoEnNYC · EVDO Newbie Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 10

YOU ARE A G O D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALL i CAN SAY. It works!!! dude I will forward this over to my contact at Novatel! OMG

Truly amazing.

MorenoEnNYC · EVDO Newbie Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 10

Walter, thanks for your hard work dude! You just don't know how this will enhance my workflow! I've struggled over this for about 2 weeks and had started to become doubtful that a solution would happen in the near future.

EVDOforums.com Rules!

xenophon · EVDO Addict Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 2004

I tried the tweak and am getting insanely great downloads but my upload didn't improved in FireFox.

I have not rebooted yet. I'll give that a shot.

xenophon · EVDO Addict Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 2004

After reboot, upload did increase for FF2...

And it's raining.

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

Oh forgot to mention. Yes, you do need to reboot for the tweak to take effect.

[Maxwell Smart mode]Sorry about that.[/Maxwell Smart mode]
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glacierjima · Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject:

Is it safe to assume that all of these tests were with the card directly in the laptop and with no router involved? I just made the change, rebooted and made no difference...I could be just a looser...and that might be the problem.

josw · EVDO User Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Posts: 69

Same here no change but going thru the linksys router (WRT54G3G-ST) I have no problem when card plugged into laptop

Fox McCloud · EVDO Junkie Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 618

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

In my case the tests were done with my server running Windows XP and ICS acting as the router for my workstations. I saw improvement even when just adjusting one of the workstations but even better after I made the same change to my server.

I'm not completely surprised this tweak doesn't work for everyone since only some of us ever saw a difference in upload speeds between IE7 and FF2 in the first place: which ultimately led to this tweak. But it's an easy tweak and doesn't seem to do any harm (other than waste a bit of memory if it doesn't do anything). So always worth a try.
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glacierjima · Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:56 am Post subject:

It's always with a try, it's just been 1 of those weeks where, nothing has gone right for me and was hoping for a pleasant surprise Laughing

But as for the browsers, I'm seeing the difference that everyone else is seeing between FF and IE. My upload speeds have become more unreliable since they turned on Rev A, I just did a test about 15 minutes ago and my upload was a whopping 52k. Before Rev A was turned on, I never ran into that and I could constantly get 110-120k up and never got anything below 100k..but..those were the days Smile

darksunpr · EVDO User Joined: 10 Mar 2007 Posts: 33

damn nice tweak just done it and here are the results

:::.. Upload Stats ..:::
Upload Connection is:: 631 Kbps about 0.6 Mbps (tested with 1013 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 77 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Server 1)
Test Time:: 2007/03/29 - 8:27am
Bottom Line:: 11X faster than 56K 1MB Upload in 13.3 sec
Tested from a 1013 kB file and took 13.149 seconds to complete
Upload Diagnosis:: Awesome! 20% + : 315.13 % faster than the average for host (spcsdns.net)
U-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-OMPUD57R1
User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3 [!]

before it i was getting 120 Kbps more or less

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307