Are cable modem tweaks safe?

[judoguru]

Ive heard alot rescently about ways to speed up your broadband speed. Ive heard of everything from registry tweaks to executable programs that run in your system tray. Ive heard that cable broadband is particularly capable of upgrading. In fact Ive heard so much im not sure who I heard what from and consequintly dont know what to trust. So I turn to you my fellow Anandtechians(?) and ask...

What works, what doesnt? Are there any of these programs that are known to cary bad stuff (backdoors, trojans, viri, etc.)?

Educate me that we all might learn together

Thanks guys! (and gals, dont wanna diss the womenz )

 

[shadowfaX]

cable modems... hmmm...

well, back when AT&T @home cable service didn't shut down (it's now AT&T Broadband Internet), i used a cable modem accelerator (called Quest@home)... it boosted my download speeds to about 5-6 times faster than my normal download speeds. i think i would normally get like 100K/s but with the tweak i had around 500K/s from fileplanet (of course, fileplanet was alot faster back then too).

right now though, i wouldn't really want to trust any uncappers because there definitely is a risk of trojan horses/backdoors/etc.

 

[Strafe]

There are 2 different things were talking about here:

1) Tweaks that allow you to adjust MTU and other things in windows. If used properly these will optimize your bandwidth. Check www.speedguide.net for their TCPOptimizer program.

2) Hacks that will 'uncap' your cable modem. Haven't tried this but we all know the cable companies cap your bandwidth (excessively). I gotta believe that the cable ISP would figure out that you've uncapped your modem and probably give you the boot.

 

[Bglad]

RWIN adjustment in registry is the one that works. Spend some time figuring out the best setting. Most of the other settings are a lot of time spent for not much gain.