SUMMARY
This article contains corrections and additions to the TCP/IP PROTOCOL.INI
configuration parameters. The first section contains corrections to the
published documentation. The second contains several undocumented
parameters.
Documentation Corrections and Explanations
BCASTADDR: The IP address to which broadcasts are sent. The
default for this is a segment broadcast, which is
the workstation's IP address with the node portion
all set to ones. Not supported for OS/2.
TCPKEEPALIVE: The interval between sending TCP keepalive packets
on an idle connection. Keepalives are sent as a
connection assurance mechanism.
Default: 600 seconds
Range: 60-32767
TCPCONNTIMEOUT: The timeout period for establishing a new connection.
Default: 30 seconds
Range: 1-32767
SCOPE: The SCOPE parameter is not supported under OS/2.
Undocumented Parameters
TCPRETRIES: Under LAN Manager versions earlier than 2.2, the
number of TCPRETRIES is fixed at 17, and the following
timings are used for TCPRETRIES:
Retry # Delay Total Elapsed Time
--------------------------------------------------
1st retry: 1 second 1 second
2nd retry: 2 seconds 3 seconds
3rd retry: 4 seconds 7 seconds
4th retry: 6 seconds 13 seconds
5th retry: 8 seconds 21 seconds
6th retry: 10 seconds 31 seconds
7th retry: 15 seconds 46 seconds
8th retry: 20 seconds 66 seconds
9th retry: 30 seconds 96 seconds
10th retry: 40 seconds 136 seconds
11th retry: 50 seconds 186 seconds
12th retry: 60 seconds 246 seconds
13th retry: 80 seconds 326 seconds
14th retry: 100 seconds 426 seconds
15th retry: 120 seconds 546 seconds
16th retry: 150 seconds 696 seconds
17th retry: 200 seconds 896 seconds
Under 2.2, the TCPRETRIES parameter is exposed.
The same timings are used, but by specifying a
value for TCPRETRIES in PROTOCOL.INI you can
control the timeout period. The default has been
changed to 8.
Default: 8 (About 1 minute total)
Range: 1-17 (17 would be about 15 minutes)
UDP_Q_PER_USER: The number of UDP buffers to allocate for each UDP
port. When a datagram is received for a given UDP
port, it must be queued by UDP. A pool of buffers
is maintained for this purpose. UDP stuffs incoming
datagrams into buffers; upper layers read them from
the queue and return buffers to the pool. When
no UDP buffers are available, datagrams are dropped.
Extremely busy (high broadcast) network clients may
benefit from raising this value slightly above the
default. If a third-party application is using UDP,
the number may also need to be increased.
DOS OS/2
Default: 3 16
Range: 1-10 1-64
UDP_Q_TOTAL: The total number of UDP buffers available for all ports.
DOS OS/2
Default: 20 64
Range: 1-30 1-256
TCPMAXBDS2USER: (OS/2 only) The maximum number of TCP buffers a
client may hold. Applications using large numbers
of small packets may benefit from increasing this
parameter.
Default: 4
Range: 1-30
TCPMAXBDS2HOLD: (OS/2 only) The total number of TCP buffers allocated
for all incoming TCP packets. Applications using
large numbers of small packets may benefit from
increasing this parameter.
Default: 10
Range: 1-30
BCASTTIMEOUT: Timeout during netbios name query/registration,
specified in multiples of timer-ticks
(1 timer-tick = 55ms). 2.1a and 2.2 only.
Default: 5 (this is what the RFC specifies)
Range: 4-51
BCASTRETRY: Number of retries during NetBIOS name
query/registration. 2.1a and 2.2 only.
Default: 3
Range: Any number greater than 0
The above parameters override the existing documentation as shown.
Care should be taken when spelling parameters, as they will be
accepted but won't have any effect when mis-spelled.