Crawling Cable Speed

Hey guys!

My brother just bought himself a new PC and I am helping him get everything ready for use. I already installed all the software (Office and AVG Free / NVIDIA Firewall already installed) + anti- malware programs (Ccleaner, Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, Ad-Aware SE, Spybot S&D, Microsoft Windows Defender and Spyware Blaster) and updated all the drivers.

Here are the specs:

• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (completely updated)
• AMD Athlon 64, 1800 MHz (9 x 200) 3000+
• Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce4, AMD Hammer
• System Memory 1024 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
• Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller - Packet Scheduler Miniport (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)

The PC connects to the internet via a Motorola SB5100 SURFboard Cable Modem (ISP: Amnet / amnet.co.cr) with an advertised speed of 512/128kbps. I already followed the suggested settings in Optimizing & Measuring the "Speed" of Internet Connection (ezlan.net) and dowloaded TCPOptimizer to maximize the connection's potential... however TCPOptmizer and CableNut (which I later installed) both failed to raise the Tcp RWIN value of 64240. I have used all the speed tests available and they all fell under the 256 to 375kbps range.

I have used these two programs before and succesfully optmized the connection for MY 'puter (Windows XP Professional with SP2, Intel Pentium III with 512 MB of RAM) using the exact same Motorola Cable Modem, and the same ISP with identical advertised speed of 512/128kbps, and I get speeds of more than 500kbps!

 

Bump!

 

Hey Algraze,
That Nvidia firewall could be the problem in your connection, it's still buggy.
Can you disable it? Just make sure you have a third party firewall before you do, if that's the only one you are using. Plenty here in the download section if you need one.
Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the response LBMEST! (I was about to pull my hair out, trying to figure out how to go around this problem )

Going over all the possibilities, I also thought that the nVIDIA firewall was the most likely culprit, but since this hardware firewall is integrated directly with the device driver that controls the PC networking connection I didn't know if disabling it was an option, or if disabling it would screw up the network.

Do you know how to disable it, and if it would have any negative effects on the PC?

Thank you for your help!


Side Note: I always thought that you could have two firewalls running just as long as one was hardware and the other software (not two software firewalls running, though ), dunno, but I may be wrong. The question is, is this nVIDIA firewall (dubbed ActiveArmor) solely a hardware firewall, or is it a hardware and software firewall???

 

I would think your connection would be better with one less layer acting on it, whether software or hardware. As far as I know, you would not have any negative effects on the PC. I'd check the motherboard manual for details on procedures because I dont know how that firewall is shut down.
I'm running a software firewall behind a router with a firewall and have no problems so you are right about that.

I looked on Nvidia's support site and found a couple of "information pamphlets" and they call it a hardware firewall. Here are the links and a short quote.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...p_tbl=9&p_id=106&p_created=1098807411&p_olh=0
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...p_tbl=9&p_id=106&p_created=1098807412&p_olh=0

Most PC firewalls are software-based add-ons, but NVIDIA Firewall is the
industry’s first true hardware-based PC firewall. And NVIDIA’s ActiveArmor
secure networking solution, which consists of NVIDIA Firewall and the
ActiveArmor engine, improves overall network security.

Hope the info helps

 

Hey LBMEST

I'll start reading through the motherboard manual and see if I can find a detailed procedure on how to shut down the ActiveArmor firewall. I'm already using ZoneAlarm Pro on my PC, I'm already used to it, and its not too shabby (compared to the bloated Norton Internet Security 2006 I had before) so i guess I'll install it (being offline) after getting rid of the buggy nVIDIA firewall.

Thanks for the heads up, really appreciate the help...

 

Glad to help. I switched from Norton 2004 to ZA free and I like the results myself.