Tools can improve bandwidth levels

How do I … improve the bandwidth performance of my Web programs?

Your Web programs and your Web browser are competing for the same limited amount of bandwidth your home or office connection provides. But if you want to restrict the amount of bandwidth your Firefox browser eats up or improve the voice quality over Skype, how would you do that?

The solution is to use quality-of-service tools that can assign priority levels to specific applications.

One we have tested and like is Netlimiter.com. Once downloaded and installed, you can assign Skype or any other Net application higher priority, limiting other applications to less.

We tested the 28-day free download of Netlimiter and found it does exactly what it claims to do. Warning: Be prepared to read the Help file as this is not a straight-ahead, simple matter of plugging numbers into a box.

Bandwidth management affects how your programs perform while on the Web. It’s probably best suited for heavy online gamers or people concerned about the quality of a VoIP tool like Skype — which permits both online instant messaging and online phone calls.

On a related but not identical matter, most Windows PCs also let you change or prioritize which open programs on your computer get the most available memory.

Windows Task Manager is the built-in Microsoft feature that lets you assign memory priority.

To get Task Manager, hit the keys Control-Alt-Delete; there you find a choice of tabs. Choose Processes. That will show all running services and programs. If you click one program and right-click, you get a Priority choice. For most programs (but not all) you can assign normal, below-normal, or higher memory priority.