Dial-Up: How to Optimize Your System to Increase Speed

October 2009. I hadn't used dial-up since 2006. I didn't think I would need to again. But I decided to spend two months in a small cabin by the side of a lake. Broadband was not offered by the phone company. I wasn't there long enough to justify installing a satellite connection. (Besides, many satellite users report speeds that barely exceed dial-up). There was no mobile (cell) phone coverage, so I could not install a broadband card. Naturally, I decided to give dial-up a go.

I was in for a shock. The good news: it can work. The bad news: it takes a whole lot more work to configure your system for dial-up than it did ten years ago.

What has happened? On a modern computer, there are an endless number of applications competing for bandwidth. Everyone who installs software on your computer (and their dog) wants to be connected, if only for updates. This can suck all the bandwidth out of a dial-up connection. You can remove the apps (and a number of services) from the start-up list, but will you remember to turn everything back on? If you leave your boot parameters more or less as you normally have them (the path I took), you'll have quite a bit of work at every boot killing connected apps and processes. Fortunately, you don't have to boot everyday—you can put your computer on "sleep" overnight.

Once all the tweaks were done, I was quite happy with my connection. What follows is a list of my system tweaks. The idea is to leave all the bandwidth open for the apps that I decide to run, e.g., the browser (Firefox), my FTP program, etc. Follow this advice at your own risk.

If you have something to add, that would be fantastic! Let's improve the information—there's so little out there on this topic; please use the comment form at the bottom of this page.

Turn Off the Wireless

There's probably a wireless button on your laptop. Switch it off. Having your computer trying to connect in several ways at once seems to make things worse.

Disable "Automatic Connection"

Some of the time, you'll be working offline. Windows is going to want to connect every five minutes by offering to dial. To stop these popups, open Internet Options in your control panel (or run iexplore.exe and choose Tools Options). Select the Connections tab, click on LAN Settings, check "Never Dial a Connection".

Exit Connected Applications from the Task Bar

Usually, you can exit task bar apps by right-clicking on their icons. For me, they are:
- My antivirus program (Avira). It keeps wanting to download definitions. I take the risk, but I could also have disabled Avira updates.
- My sky storage (Jungle Disk)
- Skype
- Windows Defender

Depending on your set-up, especially if you are a typical user, you might have a lot more connected applications in the task bar: a torrent program, apps that display news, etc. This might be a good time to not only kill them once, but to remove them from your boot procedure, using an app such as the free Autoruns from Sysinternals.com.

Kill Connected Applications from the Task Manager

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, select the Task Manager, maximize the window, click on the Processes tab. Use your intuition to determine what other apps might want to connect. (Some firewalls are good at telling you that.) You'll probably find a second instance of Windows Defender here, as well as leftover components of your anti-virus and firewall apps. Anything with "update" in its name must be stopped. Also look for things with names like sched.exe.

Disable Windows Update and other Services

What greater bandwith sucker can their be than Windows Update trying to download a 35MB file? And it's not the only offending service.

Click on Start, Administrative Tools, Services. Sort the processes according to their status (running or stopped).
Kill Windows Update
Stop BITS
Reading the descriptions, kill any updater you can see
Stop Windows Defender (at your own risk)
Stop TaskEng.exe (you may have to do this several times a day)

I also kill anything that starts with HP or has anything to do with Apple.
I don't touch "Application Experience", maybe I should.
Other ideas? Please comment at the bottom.

Tweak Firewall

Whatever firewall you use, if you've been using it for broadband, it is way too permissive for dial-up. I use the free version of Comodo, which gives me more options than the Windows. To tweak Comodo for dial-up, I made it "forget" all previous rules: Firewall, Advanced, Network Security Policy, Application Rules, then select all, click "Remove", click "Apply" then reboot. It's a joy to know I don't have dozens of updaters trying to suck my bandwidth.

Tweak Firefox and other apps you do keep

I use Firefox. I want all the bandwidth available for Firefox, but Firefox itself should be tweaked:

- If you're already running Ad Blocker, that's great, otherwise install it.
- Disable automatic updates. Tool, Options. Click on "Advanced". Click on the Updates tab and uncheck everything.
- Disable most of your add-ons (but not Ad Blocker): Tools, Ad-Ons.

Some people recommend installing the Flashblock extension to block flash.

You can also tweak some variables in the about:config menu.
I tried these:
Take network.http.pipelining.maxrequests from 4 to 8
Change network.http.pipelining from false to true
Change network.http.proxy.pipelining from false to true
Change network.dns.disableIPv6 from false to true

I did not try these:
Take network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy from 8 down to 4
Take network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server from 6 down to 2
Take network.http.max-connections from 30 down to 8
Take network.http.redirection-limit from 20 down to 2
More Firefox dial-up tweaks here.

Using Accelerators

I had decent results with Earthlink's accelerator after disabling dynamic imaging and choosing the lowest quality.

If you want to use an accelerator on Firefox, you have to specify a proxy. That's a long trip down the menu: Tools, Options, Advanced, Network, Connection Settings. For HTTP Proxy, enter localhost, for Port, enter 8080.

Choosing an ISP - Minimizing Dropped Connections

Believe it or not, in 2009, it is nearly impossible to find meaningful reviews about dial-up service providers. Sure, you'll find many pages that compare prices. But I didn't care so much whether I'd have to pay $10 or $25. I was happy to pay the big bucks for the best quality connection. I could not find any source of information about which ISP has the lowest number of dropped calls (dropped connections). I ended up going with Earthlink. It was okay, not great. I was willing to spend more money to find an alternate service, but didn't have any luck. (And in the end I realized that most of my problems came from my configuration). Do not, I repeat, not, go with Juno. You have to download their proprietary software. I had a nightmare experience battling with Indian call-center reps from hell trying to cancel the service. If you know about a 5-star dial-up provider, please let everyone know using the comments form below. :)

Smiles,

Andy

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