Tag Archives: latency

Lower your ping by disabling Nagle’s algorithm

By default Windows uses the Nagle’s algorithm when handling messages. That means that in order for your connection to send a message, that message needs to be at least the size of MSS (maximum segment size), which in most cases it is inefficient when dealing with small sized packets and situations that deal with real-time systems. Because these reasons disabling Nagle’s algorithm can considerably lower your latency/ping.

In order to disable Nagle’s algorithm simply following these steps:

  1. Open up the Registry Editor. Click start --> Run and type in regedit
  2. Navigate to the following key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
  3. You will notice that there are a few interfaces with the following format: {XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}. Simply navigate to all of them and look for clues (usually the value of DhcpIPAddress) that will indicate which is your default interface. Alternative you can do the next steps for all interfaces that are not empty if you want to disable Nagle’s algorithm on all devices.
  4. Right click on an empty space in the right window and select New –> DWORD (32-bit) Value and set its name to TcpAckFrequency. Then double click the key in order to modify it and change its value data to 1
  5. Repeat step 4 but this time set the name of the DWORD (32-bit) Value key to TCPNoDelay. Then again make sure to modify the key and change its value data to 1
  6. Restart your Windows and you are done!