Speed up your router by tweaking the MTU settings

Pt. 7 of 10 | 3:48 |

Routers 201: Intermediate Studies

Tuesday June 29, 2010

So far we've shown you a number of ways you can

configure your router

. Another thing you can tweak in your

router settings

is the MTU time. This is not always recommended, but just the same we'll show you how to

change your MTU time

just in case the need arises.

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Show Notes

- MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit and it's another term used for "Packets."

- It represents the largest amount of data that can be sent in one physical frame on your network.

- Most people have Ethernet set to 1,500 bytes. PPPoE is set at 1492. Recommended MTU for dial-up connection is 576.

- You can find your optimum MTU setting using a ping test.

- Click Start, then type CMD in the search box and a DOS window opens.

- At the DOS prompt type:

ping www.butterscotch.com -l -f 1500

- Now hit Enter.

- You most likely will get a message saying "Packet needs to be fragmented, but DF set."

- This means that the MTU size is too large.

- You can experiment by re-entering the same string only decreasing the number by 10 each time.

- For example 1490, 1480, 1470, and so on.

- You do this until you get results that don't show "Packet needs to be fragmented..." but something like this:

Reply from 74.125.67.106: bytes=64 time=114ms TTL=50

Repeated 4 times.

- We recommend leaving your MTU setting at the default. However, now you know how to adjust MTU size if you want to.

- In most cases not enough benefit is seen from tweaking the MTU number.

- If you change the MTU setting in your router you also have to change it in the NIC of each computer on your network.

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