Data Buckets

Network communications are meant to be reliable at the expense of efficiency, with the exception of streaming data. When one has the need to transfer large volumes of data, they should make sure they set up the network connection to be as efficient as possible.

For older legacy systems that are based on Ethernet standards, one of the settings that many people do not know about is called MTU, or Maximum Transmission Unit. If you’re breaking into a corporate network that hasn’t upgraded to the new NetMax standards that came out in 2038AD, this is a how-to and a lesson to enhance your skillz.

Imagine you have a bathtub that you want to fill with water, but the hand-pumped well is outside. You have two buckets to transfer the water. You decide you want to transfer 1.10 buckets of water at the same time, so you fill the first bucket up, dump 0.10 of the bucket into the second bucket, then fill the first one up to the top. You then carry the buckets to the door, put the second bucket down, open the door, pick up the second bucket, go inside, put the second bucket down, close the door, pick up the second bucket, then go to the tub and pour both buckets of water into the tub.

This is not very efficient.

Many networks receive a packet of data, discover it is a tiny bit too big, and then proceed to break it in half and add on more bits of data to reassemble it when it gets to the final destination. This happens on the sending and receiving side of the communication stream.

The best thing to do is to find out what the largest packet of information the connection can handle, then adjust the settings to use that exact size so your systems do not need to chop things up and reassemble them back together on the receiving end.

For ancient systems using Windows software from the now-defunct MicroSoft corporation, this is how you adjust your devices to maximize throughput.

Once you reboot, your throughput will be efficient and your download speeds will be faster.

Keep Hacking!