An unstable internet connection can have many causes. Sometimes the provider is to blame, but often the problem can also be found within your own four walls. We give a few tips on how to minimize the number of disconnections.
Air, cable, electricity?
It doesn’t matter whether you do a large data download, make a business Skype call, stream a movie or measure yourself against other players in one of the many free-to-play MMOs that portals like browsergames.de offer – if the internet connection suddenly drops, that’s extremely annoying . The following precautions help to avoid such disconnects.
Wireless WLAN networks are popular, after all, thanks to WLAN, you have a connection to the Internet everywhere in the house, regardless of where the telephone connection and thus the router is located. However, there is a catch: unlike network cables, WLAN connections are susceptible to external interference from radio signals. Even if the router is too far away from the PC, this has a negative impact on the connection quality.
If a cable connection is not an option, it is worth considering using Powerline adapters. These route the router signal to the end device via the power network. This article offers a comparison of different Powerline adapters.
Configure package size
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the hardware. On the software side, too, there are options for eliminating connections. For example, the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit), i.e. the maximum size of the data packets sent via TCP / IP, may be set incorrectly. If a value that is too large is selected, this can lead to packet losses. This may result in download or game interruptions, because in the event of a packet loss, the connection to the target server may be briefly interrupted.
The optimal MTU value can be determined with the free tool MTU Path (download here). If the tool is installed, you as the administrator open the command line and enter the command “mtupath” and any destination URL (start page), for example: “mtupath www.windows-faq.de”. The optimum value then appears to the right of “estimated MTU”.
With the command “netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface 25 mtu = xxxx store = persistent” you can also use the command line to set the new MTU value, whereby xxxx is replaced by the optimal value determined by MTU Path.
For safety’s sake, you should also enter the new MTU in the router setup menu – for some models, the value set at the factory is too high. Enjoy surfing, downloading and playing continuously!
Image rights: Flickr Network Rack Kev CC BY-SA 2.0 Certain rights reserved