Rinsui wrote:
Am I reading this wrong or does this program simply bombard the servers with a barrage of (mostly)
unnecessary requests in order to make sure at least some get through? Way to go for crippling the
infrastructure for a small personal gain?
...
Or am I reading this completely wrong?
Pretty much.
The program modifies the registry entry for TcpAckFrequency, which forces your OS to send ack packets (which contain no data) with a higher frequency.
I haven't finished my coffee yet, so I'll rely on someone else's description:
Quote:
Setting the TcpAckFrequency may improve your apparent ping but will not improve your actual network speed. If anything, it may make it worse by increasing the number of actual packets being transmitted by your machine for the same amount of data.
When a computer connects to another computer using TCP it performs what is known as the TCP Three-way Handshake. what happens is this:
1. Client computer sends a SYN (synchronize) packet to the server computer
2. Server computer sends a SYN-ACK (SYN-acknowledged) packet to the client computer
3. Client computer sends a final ACK (ACK acknowledged packet to the server computer.
Thus begins the TCP connection.
All these SYN, SYN-ACK, and ACK packets carry no actual data. The Windows network stack, since Windows 2000 has, by default, only responded to every other TCP SYN packet unless additional data packets are not received within a specific period of time (per RFC-1122). This reduces the total number of non-data packets that must be sent. Changing the referenced registry value to 1 will cause Windows to respond to every SYN packet, thus doubling the TCP overhead for a connection. While this will likely improve the "ping" rating you get in online games (since it takes a SYN packet less time to be ACKed) it will not increase the actual speeds of data transfer but reduce it.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/252342/tcpackfrequency1/
IMO, one shouldn't go mucking around with their TCP stack without a good understanding of the implications.
Edited, Oct 5th 2013 1:21pm by Pickins