How can I set the timeouts for connects.

[Don Beckham]

Hi folks. I see this question has been ask in a prior post and it has not
been answered. Therefore, I submit it again and hope that it gets attention.

I will give a little more detail than the previous post so that you are not
left to assume my goals.

I use an internet sharing device on a dial-up ISDN connection. I know that
somewhere in the stack is a retry timeout. When I open IE and a connection
is not already established, on the router, the DNS query (or any IP traffic
destine for the internet) triggers the connection on the router. The dialing
and handshake typically take 5-10 seconds.

The problem is, the retry/timeout has increased to over 30 seconds by the
time the connection is established causing a delay. From the time IE is
opened until it successfully connects ends up being over 60 seconds.

It's my understanding that the timeout increases each time it fails. I am
only guessing at the number here but it retries after 15 seconds then 30
seconds then 60 seconds then fail...

I would like to eliminate this delay by forcing IE or the IP stack to retry
every 2 seconds without doubling.

I would think there is a registry entry to adjust this timeout as there is a
registry entry for everything else :).

I understand that the editing the registry can be hazardous to my health and
take full responsibility for my actions. So please, if you don't know the
answer, escalate this question and get me the answer. :)

Thanks,
Don Beckham

BTW: Please email me if you answer this question so I will know to look..

[Mark L. Ferguson]

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q181/0/50.asp

--

Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP Expert Associate
marfer's notes for XP - http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/xp_notes.htm
.
(reply address mar...@msn.com is a no bounce output to the nul device)
..
"Don Beckham" <d...@nsnow.com> wrote in message news:OKEQfIQpBHA.2272@tkmsftngp02...

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

A simple page refresh command solves the problem, but you want it, you
got it. There are two timers: the DNS timeout and the TCP timeout. You
likely want to start with the DNS timeout. Note that when you change
this timeout it is for EVERY DNS timeout and not just the first one when
you dial.

You can adjust the DNS query timeouts in this manner:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; increase DNS query timeouts from 17 sec to 1,2,2,4,8,16,0 or 33 sec
; for Windows 2000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"DNSQueryTimeouts"=hex(7):31,00,00,00,32,00,00,00,32,00,00,00,34,00,00,0
0,38,\
00,00,00,31,00,36,00,00,00,30,00,00,00,00,00

In Win98 the registry key that controls the TCP connection time-out is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\MSTCP\
MaxConnectRetries

The default is 3. This key specifies the number of times a connection
attempt (SYN) will be retransmitted before giving up. The initial
retransmission timeout is 3 seconds, and it is doubled each time up
to a maximum of 2 minutes. With the default of 3 connection retries,
the connection timeout is 3+6+12=21 seconds. If you change this key
to "4" then the timeout will be (do the math) 28 seconds. You can't
change the retransmission timeout value, only the number of retries.

In Win2K you have both TCP parameters to control this time-out.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\
Tcpip\Parameters\TcpMaxConnectRetransmissions

The default value is 2. This parameter determines the number of times
that TCP retransmits a connect request (SYN) before aborting the
attempt. The retransmission time-out is doubled with each successive
retransmission in a given connect attempt. The initial time-out is
controlled by the TcpInitialRtt registry value.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\
Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\interface\TcpInitialRTT

The default value is 3 seconds as in Win98. This parameter controls
the initial time-out used for a TCP connection request and initial
data retransmission on a per-interface basis. Use caution when tuning
with this parameter because exponential backoff is used. Setting this
value to larger than 3 results in much longer time-outs to
nonexistent addresses.

The algorithm is TcpInitialRTT plus twice TcpInitialRTT plus three
times TcpInitialRTT up to a total of TcpMaxConnectRetransmissions.
The default is 3+6. If you change the retries to 3 as in Win98, then
the timeout is 3+6+12 or 21 seconds, same as Win98.

--
Kent W. England, MS MVP for WinXP Networking

"Don Beckham" <d...@nsnow.com> wrote in message
news:OKEQfIQpBHA.2272@tkmsftngp02...

[Jason]

I don't believe this kb article has the solution to his problem. He's
talking about retrying the connection, not waiting for a website
reply.

"Mark L. Ferguson" <mar...@msn.com> wrote in message news:<#zKM98QpBHA.1824@tkmsftngp07>...

> http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q181/0/50.asp
>
> --
>
> Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP Expert Associate

> marfer's notes for XP - http://www.geocities.com/marfer mvp/xp notes.htm

[Don Beckham]

Kent, thanks for the very detailed response. This is exaclty the type of
answer I was looking for. But I still have a question. I see the DNS can be
adjusted so it doesn't double the timeout.. That might work for me... maybe
1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,13 I don't understand the format in that key and it's
not apparent to me.

But in the TCP settings is there no way to change the doubling factor...
that's what is kicking our tail. I would like the retries to be like a tick
tock tick tock :) That would mean that it would connect within 1-2 seconds
after the router establishes the connection.

In most cases the DNS would work because all attempts to connect to a server
should first query DNS unless of coarse it gets it from cache or host file.

"Kent W. England [MVP]" <k...@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:u832VJRpBHA.1088@tkmsftngp02...