Everyone prefers using internet at blazing speeds, but the reality is always different. The type of router you use and the speed promised by the internet service provider majorly affect network performance. The TCP IP settings in your windows 7 machine also affect network performance. By changing the settings of your network and by limiting the way windows 7 changes the network settings, you can achieve maximum internet speeds at all times.

Windows Vista first came up Auto Tuning feature to tweak network performance depending on the usage. This tweak was supposedly developed to tune network performance. However, it resulted in problems because of the way the tweak worked. The auto tuning mode will limit receiving window size depending on network usage. This means that when your network is idle for some amount of time, the speed will be reduced.

The auto tuning feature is also imported to windows 7 and many users experienced good internet speeds by disabling auto tuning. Some routers may suffer badly due to the auto timeout set by windows 7. In order to disable it, you have to open command prompt as administrator. Then, you should type netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled in the command prompt. This will set auto tuning to disabled mode.

If you experience frequent network timeout problems, changing auto tuning settings can help. You can restore the original state by using the same command and replacing disabled with normal command.