Windows 98 registry tweaks (was: Limit number of TCP connections?)

["Ron Davis" <deflekt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Roger and all,

Thanks for the suggestions. In the meantime, I also found some clues
about the WSAENOBUFS problem in the Todo page at:
http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/TODO .

I've tweaked the MaxConnections and TcpTimedWaitDelay registry entries.
The MaxUserPort entry is not valid in the Win 98 registry, according to
my information.

From info on the Win 98 registry, I gather that in Win 98,
MaxConnections can be raised to a max. value of 512 (100 is the default
value and 256 is not high enough). 

TcpTimedWaitDelay determines the time that must elapse before TCP can
release a closed connection and reuse its resources. This period between
closure and release is the TIME_WAIT state. The default value is 240
seconds. I lowered the TcpTimedWaitDelay to 60 seconds, which releases
closed connections a lot quicker.

These settings appear to do the trick. I have run Tor as server for
about 7 hrs with the new registry settings and there were no problems
anymore. Just a couple of warning messages instead of an ever growing
list. Now I can also surf the web while Tor is running in the
background.

For those wanting to run Tor 0.0.9.6 in Win 98, here are instructions to
tweak the registry:

In your registry, look for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\
Services\VxD\MSTCP [as one line]

Edit or add:
MaxConnections
Value Type: String
Value: 512 

Edit or add:
TcpTimedWaitDelay
Value Type: String
Value: 60 

(Both MaxConnections and TcpTimedWaitDelay were not present in my
registry. I had to add them. TcpTimedWaitDelay can be lowered to 30 if
necessary.)

Regards,
Ron


On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:03:26 -0500, "Roger Dingledine" <arma@xxxxxxx>
said:
> Hi Ron,
> 
> Thanks for letting us know. This max-sockets problem has been
> bugging us on Windows for a while now.
> 
> Here are some more hints:
> 
> When you set the registry entry for MaxConnections, did you set it as
> a string or a dword? Apparently it has to be a string on 98/ME but a
> DWORD on 95.
> 
> I'm also told you need to reboot after changing your registry entry.
> 
> It's possible that 256 is still too small for what you're trying to do;
> have you tried, say 1024 or 2048? Note that this max is apparently shared
> by every application running.
> 
> Looks like NT/XP/2000 is doing fine in terms of max connections, it's
> just 95/98/98SE/ME that are based on DOS and intended for a single human
> running only client apps. That probably helps explain why some win32
> people have been doing fine: they're running NT.
> 
> Check out http://bugs.noreply.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&id=98 for
> more discussion of this bug and some other approaches for dealing with
> it.
> 
> Thanks,
> --Roger
> 
-- 
  Ron Davis
  deflekt@xxxxxxxxxxxx