Windows XP / Beginners

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Calculating settings for CableNut

Once you have downloaded CableNut, you are ready to start getting information to use with the program. The first value that you will need to calculate is the latency of your connection when it is active.To do this, you will use the trace route command built into Windows XP. Follow these steps to get the latency value to use for your connection:

1. First, open up a Command Prompt window. This can be done by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type cmd in the text box and click the OK button.
2. Once Command Prompt is loaded, you are ready for the next part. Because you will need to test your connection when it is active, you will need to find something large to download that will run the duration of the test, which will be approximately 30 seconds. You head over to www.microsoft.com/downloads and find some huge file, such as the .NET SDK framework, which is over 100,000 KBs. For the test, you want a file big enough so it will be downloading throughout the whole test. Those of you on a dialup connection can pick a much smaller file than those on a high-speed connection.
3. Once you have your download test file picked out, start the download and switch back to the Command Prompt window. In that window, type tracert www.tweakxp.com. During the test, you will see many times displayed in milliseconds. After the test finishes, pick the highest time. This is the number that you will use as your latency. Also, feel free to cancel the download after the test is finished.

Now that you have the latency value calculated, you are ready to enter this information into a great online CableNut settings calculator written by Joe Zeiler, who is one of the talented moderators at the TweakXP.com support forums. Open up your Web browser and visit www.j79zlr.com/cablenutXP2k.php (the URL is case-sensitive!), then follow these steps to get the values to enter into CableNut:

1. Once you have opened up the site, the first part of using the settings calculator is to select your connection type from the drop-down box.
2. Next, you will have to do a little research and find out exactly what your upload and download speeds should be for your Internet connection.
3. Enter the latency value that you calculated earlier into the latency text box on the Web page and then click the Calculate button.
4. After you hit the Compute Settings button, scroll down and you will see the values that were calculated. Now, you are almost done. Continue scrolling down until you see a button labeled CCS File Generator under the Cablenut setting files section. Click that button and a new window will pop up with some text in it. Make sure that you have any pop-up blockers disabled when you are using the calculator.
5. Use the mouse and select all of the text and numbers that are displayed in the pop-up window. Right-click the mouse and select copy to copy all of the text on the page to the clipboard.
6. Now open up Notepad from the Accessories folder. In the blank Notepad window, paste the contents of the clipboard by right-clicking the white background and selecting Paste.
7. Once Notepad is displaying the information that you copied from the pop-up window, all that is left is to save the file in the CableNut format.To do this, click the File menu bar item and select Save As. Then in the Save As Type drop-down box, select All Files. Key in myCableNutSettings.ccs in the file name text box. Specify the Save location, such as the desktop, and click the Save button.

You are now finished with the calculations that will optimize your Internet connection. That wasn't too hard now, was it?