Tips from the Windows Pros: Squeezing Top Speed from Your High-Speed Connection

If you're using a high-speed connection such as DSL or cable, you can make an adjustment to your computer's networking software to get the best speed from your new connection.

Internet TCP/IP software sends data in chunks called packets, which are sent in a stream from, say, a Web server to your computer. The receiving computer sends acknowledgments every so often to indicate that the data has been received correctly or to indicate that something was lost or garbled during transmission.