58. Proprietary modes for wireless networking
Many wireless product vendors include support for various proprietary wireless modes which offer considerably increased bandwidth and speed under certain conditions. Generally these devices (such as the 'super G' products offered by many manufacturers, which support up to 108Mbps bandwidth) require all wireless clients to support the same mode. Since these higher-speed modes are not generally enable by default, it's a good idea to check your existing wireless equipment to see if there is some way to squeeze more speed out of it.

Just because the box advertises a certain maximum speed does not mean that your wireless router and network cards are actually reaching that speed currently.

59. Closer is better for wireless

Again a simple tip, but one that can make a world of difference to wireless performance in your home, especially if you are using the older 802.11b standard, where data transfer is slow to begin with. The stronger the wireless signal, the faster and more reliable the data transfer will be. While 802.11b and g devices are supposed to work effectively up to 300 feet from a wireless access point, the range of individual products varies widely, and obstructions and atmospheric conditions also affect this number. Most common obstructions (such as typical wooden flooring in a house) provide less of an obstacle to a wireless signal than an increase in distance does, so plan your wireless placement accordingly.

60. Enhance your Internet connection

If you have a broadband connection, either DSL or cable, chances are there's a few things you could do to optimize its speed. Windows XP uses a variety of registry settings to control how fast data is passed to and from network interfaces, so tweaking these settings to more accurately reflect the capabilities of your connection is a good idea. As there are a number of rather esoteric locations in the registry that need to be changed in order to tweak your connection's speed, refer instead to the selection of registry files here to automatically set the correct values for your system.

61. Increase DNS cache size

As written above, Windows XP uses a DNS cache to store recently visited Internet addresses. This cache is referred to before a request is sent out over the Internet when the user requests a web page address. If the IP address corresponding to the web address is in the cache, that address gets used, saving time. If it is not, your computer needs to find out the correct IP address by asking a DNS server over the Internet.

Items are kept in the cache for a finite amount of time and are constantly bumped to make room for more recent addresses. By increasing the size of the DNS cache, you can increase the speed of your web browsing, especially if you regularly check the same web pages.

To increase the size of the DNS cache, open REGEDIT and navigate to; 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters'

Create the following DWORD values:

CacheHashTableBucketSize = 1
CacheHashTableSize = 180
MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit = ff00
MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit = 12d

Exit and restart.