MyWireless Tweaks

TheRoDent

TheRoDent

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This isn't really anything special, but a place that I've started documenting what I've found out about the USB drivers, forcing the dialler to reconnect more than 5 times (I see ProAsm's new MySignal does this [:D]), and some other cruft.

Most of it are registry tweaks. I'll distribute a set of optimized drivers once I get the time to fixup all the assembly JMP's in the drivers. Let me rephrase that. I'll distribute something that'll fix the drivers. Wouldn't want to be caught redistributing the drivers themselves...

http://rodent.za.net/MyTweaks

A lot of this stuff may not be applicable to you. I use Win2K/XP and Linux and the info is based mostly around that (meaning no testing on other OS's). Still some ways to go with the Linux driver, but it's getting there.

Use it, don't. It's really just an attempt to document what I've learned whilst fooling around with the device.
 
What tweaked my interest [;)] was that stuff about the USB debug overhead. I notice a sluggishness when MyWireless is connected (for example in getting the Internet Explorer favourites lists to display). Perhaps this is why.

Thanks for sharing this, Rodent.
 
Looking good [;)]

RoDent what you know about the QoS Packet Shedular.
I find on my Adsl, if I disable it, my downloads and pings are definently much better, but I see on the MyWireless modem properties you dont have the option to disable it as its greyed out and the only option is to uninstall it which I'm very tempted to do but how does one get it back should you need to.


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Does anyone know of the use of that stupid thing. I can see why QoS can be important but you cannot tweak the "QoS Packet Scheduler" or set it or anything so who knows if its doing anything other than reserving a small percentage of packets ie. wasting. I reckon you can uninstall it and never worry again. At least, thats what I would do.
 
The QoS scheduler only has an effect if you are using a QoS aware application (There's a bunch of extra Winsock calls for requesting QoS)

Only when an application has requested some QoS, will the QoS scheduler reserve some bandwidth on the link. If nothing ever requests a QoS IP connection, 100% of bandwidth is available to all your apps, so there shouldn't be much overhead. Of course the QoS scheduler will stil get called everytime a transmit happens, which may result in some kernel overhead, but I don't think enough to have any serious impact.

The only things that I know of that makes use of QoS is Windows' Streaming Media server and possibly Windows Media Player. Some "tropical" middleware platforms use it too.

As a general rule, I don't even bother installing the QoS service, since there aren't really many enduser applications using it. QoS is handy in big complicated networks, but it is a bit of a waste for a single end-user who wants to hog all his own bandwidth. :)


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Delet the QOS packet schedular you dont need it, and certainly wont notice it if its gone.

Thanks for the tweaks cant wait to go home and give it a try anything I can use to shave of my ping times is awsome.

________________________
Must think happy thoughts about the antenna!!![:D]
 
QoS may get handy once SA companies start to make VOIP phonecalls. 2010, 2020 ?

("I'm sorry but Telkom technical support is unable to answer your call because our wireless connection has reached full capacity")


24% to 66 (Menlo), just in case PA asks
 
Wow dude, I just tried it, and while my pings are still unstable due to my low signal (23%) I definatly see an improvement

Over 20 pings my average dropped from 187ms to 113ms

Sweet, now all I need is the antenna and I'll be set :)
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by noone</i>
<br />Wow dude, I just tried it, and while my pings are still unstable due to my low signal (23%) I definatly see an improvement

Over 20 pings my average dropped from 187ms to 113ms

Sweet, now all I need is the antenna and I'll be set :)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

[}:)] &lt;- Ph34r teh l33t Rodent ... Told you okes ... Don't piss him off though or he'll hack into your box and fill it with goat pr0n
 
Hi tweakers :P
I put a bit of info re what a sentech techie told me about the max connect rate of windows slowing down the 'real' connections we're getting, under the "Confusion of Baud 115kbs Rate" thread - take a look and see if I've uncovered a dastardly plot, or whether a bored sentech techie was telling me a fib.. If the techies right, then a patch/hack is in need of being spread around..
If techie was lying, I'll be embaressed and go all quiet again.. :)
 
From everything I've seen the serial port's bitrate IOCTL gets completely ignored by the USB driver. The driver allows you to set the bitrate for "fun", but it doesn't actually do anything. It does allow you to change the parity and databits, but that's really just legacy support too.

The datastream to&lt;-&gt;from the to the IpWireless modem driver is done at a fixed negotiated USB rate.

There are a couple of vendor specific USB commands that seem to change the transfer rate between your USB controller and the modem, but I think they're part of the USB1/USB2 negotiation.

I'm not 100% sure of this, but I'm pretty convinced the emulated serial bitrate by the windows driver is just that. Emulated.

I'll report back if I find anything interesting.

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OK, more investigation reveals that the Windows driver does in fact send a USB command to the modem that adjusts the bitrate when Windows does a IOCTL_SERIAL_SET_BAUD

I'm not too sure whether this is just informational data sent to the modem, perhaps it changes it's buffering characteristics when a higher bitrate is selected, since the USB speed is pretty much constant and negotiatated by the USB controller and the modem.

The fact is that 0x20 gets sent over the wire when selecting 115200, this value changes the higher the bitrate you select (e.g. 921600=0x4). Like I said, It can't possibly change the transfer speed over the USB wire, since that is fixed, but it may inform the modem to do less flow control, since it knows that the host is expecting data at a higher rate, or it might change some of the device characteristics.

I'd recommend that everyone set their serial rate to either the highest possible value, or a value well above your package speed, just in case it does something useful.

The dialler honors this value, even though it uses 115200 to poll the modem for status information.

To change the bitrate go to Network Connections-&gt;sentech-&gt;Properties Click on "Configure" on the first page where the modem/port is listed, and choose the highest rate from the dropdown list.

As I said, this may or may not do much, but I can definately see that a different instruction is sent to the device, when selecting a higher bitrate, so it is likely that it does _something_

Changing the bitrate doesn't get data to, or from your modem faster, and it doesn't make Windows RAS communicate any faster with the modem, but it does tell the modem something. What exactly that is, is anyone's guess.

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Non-empirical testing shows that downloading a 500kb file from tucows.is.co.za doesn't really make any difference at any bitrate.

Even testing with the serial rate set at 9600 (wah!), achieves the same 14kb/s download speed on my 128K package.

It probably won't hurt upping the bitrate on your modem, but It doesn't seem to change things a helluva lot either.


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RoDent is right, the baud rate is the baudrate between the PC and the modem and has nothing to do with the bitrate between the modem and the server as that is all done via RAS - Remote Access Server.
You can set the baudrate to 300 if you like - makes no difference.


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