• Intro • Graphic Images • The Sound and the Fury • Platter Chatter • How's your ISP treating you? • Other Tuning Tips How's your ISP treating you? Talking to the Big Pool The best thing you can do to improve your performance when connected to the Internet is to make sure your ISP (Internet service provider) has a fat pipe to the Internet. A provider with redundant T3 lines, for example, will yield much better performance than an ISP with a single T1 line. Sometimes it takes a little research to find out what your ISP uses, but it's time well spent. You connect to the Internet using the TCP/IP protocol. If you're still running Windows 95, one of the key issues in the way Windows 95 handles dial-up TCP/IP connections is an arcane parameter known as MaxTMU. Changing this involves editing the registry. Alternatively, you can download the cool shareware utility TweakDUN (Tweak Dial-Up Networking) from www.pattersondesigns.com/tweakdun/. It is shareware, though, so if you find it useful, make sure you pony up the 15 bucks - it's a small price for this useful tool. Another piece of freeware that fills the same role is PPP Boost, which can be found at www.hotfiles.com. System power-ups