Have you noticed that inexplicably, after applying XP SP2 that certain web pages seem to load slower? Are you experiencing slower/different ftp connection issues? Dropped ftp connections? If you have any of these symptoms and/or other 'out of the blue' issues with performance where multiple TCP connections are needed, you MUST read on! Billy Gates strikes again, apparently continuing to believe that MS knows better than you what your system needs are :GRRRRR:!

I have been chasing, for about 2 months, a very irritating and elusive issue. About 2 months ago (approx) I started having issues displaying all Internet sites that had many images on them, even if the images were small (as it turns out this was a symptom and not a cause). I then would have mysterious 'hangs'. I had ftp connection problems, etc. Trust me when I say that I become obsessed when my PC does not respond correctly :obsessive:. Anyway, I have gone through 10's of hours of debugging this and that, checked monitors, ad nauseum. I finally ran out of options and remembered that MS, in their infinite wisdom, is installing SP2 and other fixes at their will and started wondering if maybe some connection 'feature' may have been messed with. BINGO! For whatever the reason, MS ()%$$%#$%@!! changed a max connections setting. I quote:

Windows XP SP2 limits the number of possible TCP connection attempts per second to 10 from an unlimited number in SP1. This can affect performance on server and P2P programs that need to open many outbound connections at the same time. Notes - With the new implementation, if a P2P or some other network program attempts to connect to 100 sites at once, it would only be able to connect to 10 per second, so it would take it 10 seconds to reach all 100. In addition, even though the setting was registry editable in SP1, it is now only possible to edit by changing it directly in the system file tcpip.sys. Keep in mind this is a cap only on incomplete outbound connect attempts per second, not total connections. Servers and P2P programs can definitely be affected by this new limitation. Use the fix as you see fit.

For more on this and to d/l the fix, get SP2 TCP Slowdown Fix

Please note that I am not responsible for issues arising on your machine if you apply this fix. It installed on my PC w/o any problems at all and resolved all my problems. As with all fixes that you d/l from the Internet, virus scan and use caution.