26th January 2001
Coming from the "Go With The Flow" Department, Lockergnomaniac Steven Groginsky removes another middle man. "After reading part of an article describing COM port flow control as functioning mainly to prevent buffer overruns, I have selected 'No flow control' for my COM ports in the Windows Device Manager. To get here, simply right-click on My Computer, select Properties, then flip to the appropriate tab. I believe I'm getting better speed from my modem now. I'd like to have this confirmed by someone with a 56k connection as I have never seen this tweak before [NOTE: discussion should take place in either the Reboot My PC discussion list or Lockergnome newsgroups]. The principle is that buffer overruns occur when the CPU takes bits out of the buffer slower than the modem is putting them in. I figured that with an AMD K6- III 400, I wouldn't have to worry about that. So, this is for anyone with a system that never reaches 100% usage minus what it takes to service the Internet connection; you can safely turn off flow control for a [possible] boost in speed."