Colin's Weekly Tip: Unload Network Tasks to NIC

[Colin]

Have you ever found your computer slowing to a crawl when working on the network? That's because WindowsXP by default, uses your CPU to process network tasks instead of off loading them onto the network card which obviously chews up less resources.<BR><BR>Luckily if you have a good network card you can force Windows to do all the calculations at the network card instead of on your processor. <BR><BR>First load up regedit (start -> run then type regedit and press ok). >From there follow this path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Services -> Tcpip -> Parameters and find/create the DisableTaskoffload DWORD value. Set its value to 0 then save and reboot.<BR><BR>Once that's done WindowsXP will use your NIC's processing power to handle any network tasks instead of the main processor.

[Unco]

Hi, I'd like to know if this tweak will also work on Windows 2000 (Professional/Server)<BR><BR>I found that the DWORD value was not there in XP Professional, so I had to create it.<BR><BR>Thanks.

[Nova]

nice tip <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"> <BR><BR>well i'm just going to respond to this so i can take over the whole forum <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0"> i have to much time on my hands, maybe i should start some c++ programming <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[Unco]

i don't think this tweak makes any worthwhile difference. maybe it could have worked if someone answered my original question, but obviously nobody knows.

[Nova]

uh he says find/create the dword, i use xp and also had to create it

[Unco]

hah, can't edit post.<BR><BR>I was referring to the question of whether this tweak works on Windows 2000.<BR><BR>I did mention that I created the entry in XP.<BR><BR>But thanks anyway.

[computron]

Does this "offloading" of work to the NIC have any affect on onboard NICs? Or is this only good for PCI based NICs?