I recently ran across an article that discussed load balancing at the software level in Microsoft Windows Vista.  With a simple registry key, it is possible to randomize network connections to be distributed evenly across multiple network connections.

I have made the change to my system, and I will evaluate my network performance over the next few days to see if there are any noticeable changes.  Because I use my desktop PC to stream video to a laptop in another room, I expect a slight improvement in performance when running Bit Torrent downloads simultaneously.  Bit Torrent usually causes video streaming performance problems, and I am forced to disable it while watching streaming video on the network.  Wish me luck!

Here are the steps required to enable this functionality:

1. Start the registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters.
3. From the Edit menu, select New – DWORD value.
4. Enter a name of RandomAdapter, and press Enter.
5. Double-click the new value, enter 1 to enable or 0 to disable, and click OK.
6. Close the registry editor.
7. Reboot the machine.

Although I found a replacement browser, I was less than impressed with Mozilla Thunderbird for email.  Since I had invested a large sum of money into Microsoft Office 2007 for school, I decided to give Outlook a try.  My first complaint about Outlook was the subpar anti-spam capabilities, and I started searching for plugins to address that concern.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find anything worthwhile until recently.

As it turns out, Trend Micro has a free anti-spam plugin for Outlook and Outlook Express.  The bad news is that the current version will expire on December 31, 2008.  I’m hoping they will release a new version for 2009.  Nevertheless, I thought this was worth mentioning because Trend Micro may decide to continue supporting this product if more people use it.  If you’re an Outlook or Outlook Express user, give it a try!