Best Advanced Properties for Qualcomm Atheros AR8xxx PCIE Fast Ethernet Controller?

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mb91

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I am perplexed by many of the Advanced Property settings for the on-board Qualcomm Atheros AR8162/8166/8168 PCIE Fast Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30) on my Toshiba Satellite laptop running 64-bit Windows 10 Version 21H2 (OS Build 19044.1288). What I'm looking for are the best settings to both maximize networking speeds and also reducing the burden on the CPU (by offloading as much as is reasonable to the Ethernet card itself).

Here are the available properties that need to be set:
  • ARP Offload
  • ECMA
  • Energy Efficient Ethernet
  • Flow Control
  • Interrupt Moderation
  • IPv4 Checksum Offload
  • Large Send Offload (IPv4)
  • Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4)
  • Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6)
  • Max IRQ per Second
  • NS Offload
  • Receive Buffers
  • Shutdown Wake Up
  • Speed & Duplex
  • TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
  • TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6)
  • Transmit Buffers
  • UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4)
  • UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6)
  • VLAN ID

I enabled all the "Offload" properties, but I've seen a couple of posts that claim that this would actually slow things down, but that's hard to accept, which is one key purpose of this OP. Also, I have no idea what some of the acronyms mean, let alone how to set them. Would anyone please be so kind as to advise me? Thanks!
 
Believe it or not - the default settings are typically the best in most cases. I usually set the link speed manually and full duplex because back in the day negotiation didn't always pick the best settings.
 
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Look up optimising Intel Ethernet for gaming or low latency

I asked this same question here about Intel ones and got told nothing you can do. So I dug and found there is stuff you can change. A lot of the features you listed above are the same for both Intel and Qualcomm.

Basically switch off any power saving features.
Switch off interrupt moderation or severly limit it for latancy benefits.
Max out the recieve and transmit buffers.
Set offloads on to taste.
 
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daglesj said:
Look up optimising Intel Ethernet for gaming or low latency

I asked this same question here about Intel ones and got told nothing you can do. So I dug and found there is stuff you can change. A lot of the features you listed above are the same for both Intel and Qualcomm.

Basically switch off any power saving features.
Switch off interrupt moderation or severly limit it for latancy benefits.
Max out the recieve and transmit buffers.
Set offloads on to taste.
Click to expand...
Mega6 said:
Believe it or not - the default settings are typically the best in most cases. I usually set the link speed manually and full duplex because back in the day negotiation didn't always pick the best settings.
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks very much! I genuinely appreciate your help. It's not surprising that I can find no official documentation for those settings, given that many engineers, especially hardware engineers, are often disinclined to write these up for the average hardware dummy like myself.

Thanks again!
 
Mega6 said:
Believe it or not - the default settings are typically the best in most cases. I usually set the link speed manually and full duplex because back in the day negotiation didn't always pick the best settings.
Click to expand...
While this was often the case with 100Mb Ethernet it is not the case with gigE copper. In fact hard coding link speed/duplex with copper is violation of the actual standard and can result in incorrect clocking. Always use auto/auto with gigE copper.
 
Mega6 said:
Ok, I'll believe it when I see it.
Click to expand...
You can see it by going and reading IEEE standards on it. IEEE 802.3ab mandates autonegotiation on 1000BASE-T, 1000BASE-TX, and 10GBASE-T (probably more as well, I haven't kept up with that particular bit in the standard in ages, as it'd be pretty stupid to manually set link speeds anywhere).
 
daglesj said:
optimising Intel Ethernet for gaming or low latency
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reminder, I need to brush up on that. Problem is I have no proper access to the provider-provided cable box+wifi
 
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