Speed up your NIC

[Tiretool]

Click "Start", "Run", then type in sysedit.

Close all windows except for the system.ini window. Scroll down til you find the [386Enh] section. At the end of this section add the line Irq11=4096 but substitute the Irq of your NIC where mine says 11. Yours might be something like Irq13=4096 or Irq9=4096.

This will allocate 4 megs of memory for your NIC and will give you on average a 20% increase in speed over your lan, cable connection, or whatever is plugged into your NIC.

Here's what my entry looked like after I finished.

[386Enh]
ebios=*ebios
woafont=dosapp.fon
mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd
device=*dynapage
device=*vcd
device=*vpd
device=*int13
device=*enable
keyboard=*vkd
display=*vdd,*vflatd
EMMExclude=C000-CFFF
Irq10=4096

When done just close and when prompted that the system.ini file has changed... do you want to save the changes? Hit yes.

[glc]

Now - what happens if the NIC is sharing IRQ with another device?

[Tiretool]

errrr... dunno

[hackercarlos]

hehe

[PC_Rookie]

I hear that the NIC setting is not valid. It is not supported by MS in any way. But I did that tweak a while back and didnt really notice a difference in my internet connection, untill I removed the value from [386Enh] . Then I could tell that my connect performed a bit sluggish compared to when I had the value set. I dont really know, but as for me, it did work

BTW , I was running win98SE back then.

Take care...
-PC_R

[Toaster]

I went poking around with this and found the following:
IRQX=####
The IRQ assignment is valid but the number one uses designates "bytes" added to the FIFO buffers.
(FIFO=first in, first out)
It seems the "size" is simply a "buffer" for the IRQ to ready itself for CPU interupt service.
I dont think the value is in "megabytes" but rather "bytes" but I could be wrong. In my case, system memory did NOT drop 4 MB but 4k bytes wouldn`t be notable as a memory usage amount. There is also a "time" switch that can be used here to give particular devices more or less time on the bus. The switch you discovered adjusts the FIFO buffers and has the same effect to some degree. For devices that use a great deal of CPU time (CD-ROM and IDE devices) this could have good effect. This should work on ANY device using ANY IRQ. As to its behavior on a shared IRQ is something to discover but I suggest it simply increases the FIFO buffers for the IRQ in question and not the device per se.

[Cymbeline]

Ok. We have stuff for Windows. What about Linux? :-)

[Toaster]

Linux is a "dynamic" O/S rather then a "static" O/S like Micky$oft. Linux boxes can adjust themselves to some degree.
Aside from this, Linux accesses hardware directly and not via software calls to the hardware. This initself is a dramatic performance increase. In Linux, the hardware governs itself where in Micky$oft, the O/S governs the hardware.