Today’s ISPs provide fast Internet but what if it could be faster? As you’re about to see, it can be. This isn’t some OS networking tweak or phony software. Some networking tweaks are useful but they do very little compared to what we’re about to show you. With this method, you’ll be able to double, triple, or quadruple your Internet connection speed. You can even go faster than that. We’ll give you the usual tweaks too in case you want them.
The Usual Tweaks
Let’s start with networking tweaks that speed up Internet and then we’ll get to the really good stuff. You can’t double your Internet speed with these but they do help.
DNS Tweak
This is the most common tweak you’ll find online. Switch your DNS resolvers to a provider that has closer and faster DNS servers.
Change DNS Resolvers in Windows 10
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Change DNS Resolvers in Mac
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For other operating systems, see the OpenDNS computer configuration guides.
opendns also provides dns security and other services like parental controls.
Using better DNS resolvers doesn’t actually increase your Internet connection speed. It can however decrease web page loading time. Whenever you visit a web page, your computer has to resolve the domains you’re visiting to IP addresses. It does this with the DNS resolvers and if they’re slow, so is your page load time. This is especially true these days as loading a web page usually means loading resources from 20 or more domains.
WiFi Tweaks
WiFi problems can actually affect transfer speeds as well as the reliability of your Internet connection. This is also important for the big speed up method we’re going to get to shortly. If you have fast Internet but your WiFi bottlenecks you, your speed could suffer.
First, login to your WiFi router’s administration panel. This may seem intimidating but it’s not so hard. You just need to figure out what your router’s IP address is. Here’s a list of common router IPs. Chances are, yours is one of these:
192.168.1.1
192.168.1.254
192.168.0.1
192.168.2.1
Copy each one of those into the address bar of your browser and navigate to them until you land on your router’s admin panel. You’ll probably be prompted for a username and password. That’s usually printed on the side of your router. If you’re having trouble logging in, contact your ISP or router manufacturer for help.
Check The Bands
A relatively new router should at least support 802.11n. N is capable of speeds up to 600Mbps and is faster than previous models such as 802.11g. More recently, 802.11ac has become popular. AC routers support speeds up to 4.5Gbps and support technologies such as beamforcing.
Figure out which bands your router supports and use the fastest one. A new band called 802.11ad (WiGig) will soon be the standard. WiGig can achieve speeds up to 4.5Gbps.
Select a Channel
Your WiFi router can greatly benefit by operating on a channel that less devices are on. The 2.4GHz band is particularly congested because of things like wireless phones, bluetooth devices, baby monitors, etc. Of course other WiFi routers in the area contribute to congestion as well.
If you’re using a Mac, Apple has a free tool called Wireless Diagnostics. To use it, hold the Option key while clicking on the WiFi icon on the right-hand side of the menu bar. Then choose Open Wireless Diagnostics. Ignore the actual Wireless Diagnostics window. Now go to the Window tab on the left side of the menu bar and choose Scan. You’ll see a list of all the WiFi signals in your area and the channels they’re operating on.
In Windows, you’ll want to download a free tool like Acrylic Wifi Home or Vstumbler. Both of these tools have similar capabilities. They provide an analysis of surrounding WiFi signals so you can pick a lesser-used channel.
There are also similar apps for Android and iPhone. You can easily find them by searching your respected app store for “WiFi scanner.”
I recommend the channels 1, 6, and 11 since they don’t overlap. Choose whichever one is being used least in your area.
Windows Networking Tweaks
There are some commands you can run from the Windows command-line to enhance network performance. To get to the command prompt, click the Start menu and type either command or powershell.
I’m going to list off some commands and what they do. Simply type them each into the command prompt and press Enter. They might not all work on your system. That’s okay. You should reboot after each one to activate the setting. Then, make sure it hasn’t caused any problems. If it has, disable it. I’ll include the commands to disable each one.
Whenever you download a Windows program that claims to boost Internet speed, these are the commands it runs.
Chimney Offload State
This feature transfers some network connection processing tasks from your computer’s CPU to your network adapter. This frees up processor time.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global chimney=enabled
To disable: netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled
Direct Cache Access
This reduces system overhead by allowing the network controller to transfer data directly to the CPU’s cache.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global dca=enabled
To disable: netsh int tcp set global dca=disabled
ECN
ECN stands for Explicit Congestion Notification. ECN allows your router to signal network congestion without dropping data packets.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global ecncapability=enabled
To disable: netsh int tcp set global ecncapability=disabled
Add-on Congestion Control Provider
Typically, your connection will initially send data in small blocks. If you increase them gradually, it can help prevent network congestion. This takes a different approach. It aggressively ramps up your TCP window size. It can improve performance.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp
To disable: netsh int tcp set global congestionprovider=none
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level
This used to have to be done manually but ever since Windows 7, it can be done automatically for you. This feature has the possibility of both increasing and decreasing speeds in some situations. This setting is more variable than on and off.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=enabled
Medium level: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=restricted
Low level: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted
To disable: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
NetDMA State
This allows your network adapter to transfer data directly to applications, bypassing the CPU.
To enable: netsh int tcp set global netdma=enabled
To disable: netsh int tcp set global netdma=disabled
Double Connection Speed for Fast Internet
If your Internet connection isn’t suffering from a serious problem, there’s only one way to drastically increase your transfer speed. You have to increase your bandwidth. To do this, you need to combine multiple Internet connections.
How you do this is up to you. You can either purchase multiple Internet connections or pool your neighbors’ WiFi connections (With permission of course). Just about every Internet service provider will sell you an additional connection. They’ll often do this at a discount.
So, how do you combine them? Over the years there have been various methods of combining Internet connections. The most common method is called channel bonding aka NIC teaming. Unfortunately, channel bonding setups can be very complicated. What’s worse, even if you get it working, your connection won’t truly be combined into one.
The big downside to typical channel bonding is that your computer will use both Internet connections half of the time. For instance, you could be streaming a video while download a file. The video stream might be happening over one connection and the download over the other. This isn’t truly combining both connections to form one.
The Solution — Channel Bonding VPNs
The most reliable and affordable solution is called Speedify. Speedify is a channel bonding VPN software solution that truly combines multiple Internet connections. All connections are spread across multiple network adapters and recombined at their VPN servers. The Speedify software is quite stable. It’s available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
Speedify also provides a unique form of anonymity by splitting up connections before they’re sent to their vpn servers.
Free Methodology
Any methodology here will include Speedify so you’ll have to at least purchase their software. They do have a free trial. You don’t necessarily have to purchase extra Internet connections. The first method I can imagine is a group of neighbors deciding to pool their WiFi connections together into one super fast connection.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
To do this, you’ll need a WiFi adapter for each neighbor, including yourself, plus one to provide the WiFi hotspot. What kind of adapter you get will depend on the distance from you to your neighbors. You’ll want WiFi adapters that you can connect antennas to. I’ll list a few for your consideration.
The important thing about this adapter is that you can attach an external WiFi antenna to it. The Anewkodi AC600 supports up 600Mbps transfer speeds. If the combined speed of you and your neighbors is approaching 600Mbps or greater, consider something like the next one.
The BrosTrend can reach speeds up to 1200Mbps.
The SuperPowerSupply USB WiFi adapter is the one I’m currently using. The speed is only 150Mbps but the range is decent and I don’t need more speed than it provides. You can also use WiFi range extenders if you absolutely have to.
Whichever adapter model(s) you choose, the setup is the same. You’ll plug them all into your PC and connect them one by one to each of your neighbors. Then, add the adapters to Speedify. Speedify will create a virtual adapter which represents all of the network connections combined into one. The virtual adapter will now be the primary Internet connection on your computer.
You’ll now need to use your last remaining WiFi adapter to share the super fast connection with your house and all your neighbors. For that, skip ahead in this article to the section Creating Your Hotspot.
Purchasing Multiple Connections
This is what I do. I have multiple Internet lines coming into the house. Each line has its own router/modem. I ran an ethernet cable from each modem to a PC that I built for the purpose of being a router for the whole house. To accomplish this, I had to purchase some extra ethernet adapters. The following adapter is the one I chose.
Once I connected all my Internet connections from my modems/routers to the computer and ran Speedify, it noticed them right away. I also plugged an extra WiFi adapter into the computer (In addition to the one to provide my hotspot) and connected it to a 4G hotspot device. I then set that as a redundancy connection in Speedify. This has the effect of fail-over in case all of my wired connections go down.
Beautiful! What you get with the Speedify program is basically a VPN client with channel bonding and a virtual adapter. How much does it cost? Just one minimal software payment per year. That and you get a VPN service by nature. You can also choose which server to connect through. They have servers all over the world. Torrents are supported as well.
If you need to test your Internet connection speeds, use SpeedTest.net.
I combine slow connections into one relatively fast one. You can combine many fast connections just the same.
Speedify For Mobile
Speedify isn’t just for combing multiple connections with a PC. Any connection you can make on an Android or iOS device can be combined there too.
Imagine that on your phone you have two connections, WiFi and 4G. Using their software, you can combine the WiFi and 4G into one blazing fast connection that doesn’t cost as much as using only 4G data.
Creating Your Hotspot
Now that you’ve bonded multiple connections into a Speedify virtual adapter, you’ll probably want to share that connection with the rest of your devices. There are two ways to do this. One way is to use wired connections. The other is to create a WiFi hotspot. You can do either or both at the same time. The wired version is beyond this article (You can lookup how to share via ethernet elsewhere). Let’s talk about creating a hotspot.
There’s lots of software out there for creating a hotspot with an extra WiFi adapter. We’re going to stick with the same software company though and use Connectify. Connectify and Speedify are the same company. I use them because their hotspot software is great and it’s designed to work perfectly with Speedify.
Connectify can do more than just share a virtual adapter over WiFi. It allows you to create network bridges and WiFi repeaters without a specialized device. It can also remove ads from your browser connections, ration out your bandwidth for connections that charge for it, facilitate file sharing across networks, and more.
As you can see, Connectify has tons of great features you’d expect to see in a router. Connectify is also good for creating a hotspot on the go, sharing Internet with all your devices and anyone who you want to let use it.
I hope I’ve made the Internet a faster, more enjoyable place for you. Happy downloading!
