Increase half-open connection limit

Ever wondered why your torrent download speeds don’t go as high as your maximum bandwidth? Well that can be due to a number of factors, one of which is the limit on number of half open TCP/IP connections you can have at a time. Don’t know what is that? You don’t have to, just follow this quick guide to learn how to bypass that limit and significantly boost your download speeds.

To keep things simple, Half Open connection limit is imposed by Microsoft to prevent certain type of malware from infecting your system. Unfortunately, this also handicaps your P2P download speeds. The limit is a maximum of 10 connections at a time, but you can easily increase it by patching thetcpip.sys in your system directory, but there is a better way to do it.

TCP-Z is an awesome tool that lets you increase the maximum limit of open connections you can have to anything you like. But its not recommended to go over a certain value because speeds may start to suffer then. It works for all versions of Windows included XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7.

Here is a quick way to boost your limit:

1. Download TCP-Z and extract it somewhere on your hard drive.
2. Navigate to the folder, and run the executable compatible with your operating system. For 32-bit Windows, select tcpz.exe and for 64-bit Windows opentcpz64.exe.
3. You need to right click and select Run as Administrator if you are on Vista or Windows 7.
4. After a couple of prompts, you would land on the window displayed above.
5. Click the Patch tab and set the slider on the top right to what you want. Its usually recommended to keep the maximum limit between 50 and 100.
6. Hit the Apply button and now you’re all set.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that the limit is just patched in your RAM. You’re tcpip.sys file is intact, as it should be. The patch would be cleared when your OS restarts.

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