See what your Windows network stack is really doing — then change it safely, or not at all.
Inventory, gaming diagnostics and reversible NIC tuning in one native app.

Gallery · Features · Safety · Getting started · Compatibility reports · Build

Warning

SockTuner is a community beta, not production software. Read-only inventory and diagnostics are the main surface. Tuning is experimental and changes live network settings: applying a NIC property restarts that adapter and briefly drops its link, so never apply a change through the connection being changed. Tuning writes need consent and elevation and are snapshotted, verified, audited and reversible. Optional driver-store cleanup has a separate confirmation and protects in-use packages, but removed packages cannot be restored automatically. Host diagnostics and cleanup.

Gallery

Dashboard — inventory at a glance and a health check that opens the section that fixes each finding
Gaming diagnostics	Host diagnostics	Tuning plan
DNS resolvers	Interrupt affinity	Preferences

_{Captured on 2026-10-30 from the self-contained 0.9.0-alpha.8 Release candidate (source at 851adc8). Diagnostics are shown before a run; no live settings were changed.}

Who it is for

Tweakers, technicians, competitive players, system integrators and power users who want one place to inspect and control the Windows networking stack, network adapters and NIC driver settings.

It is not a "make my ping lower" button. Network settings depend on the workload, driver, OS and topology: disabling RSS, ECN, auto-tuning, offloads or interrupt moderation is not universally better, Nagle changes only affect TCP while most games use UDP, and no client-side setting replaces router-side SQM for bufferbloat. SockTuner shows the evidence and the trade-off, and leaves the call to you.

Features

Area	What you get
Inventory	Adapters, routes, interfaces, DNS, network profiles, bindings, NIC counters, TCP templates and globals, QoS policies, offloads, interrupts, Winsock catalog, driver identity and every driver-advertised NDIS property — read natively, no third-party tools
Gaming diagnostics	One check walks the path layer by layer (PC/NIC, LAN or Wi-Fi, router, access link, ISP, route, server) with latency, loss and jitter percentiles, DNS and TCP timing, path MTU, route quality and a playability verdict against the game's tick rate
Game ports & NAT	Opt-in IPv4 UDP observations on a chosen local port, game/platform port references, controlled alternate-port checks and security-ranked guidance — no misleading universal Open/Strict grade or automatic router changes. Method and limits
Wi-Fi diagnostics	Passive WLAN data from the Windows cache — signal, rate, band, nearby channel pressure — without triggering a scan
Host diagnostics	TCP connection ownership; opt-in, simultaneous ETW/latency observations with repeated-evidence gating for affinity or ancillary-device disable. Independent, optional cleanup of unused older driver packages protects all in-use versions. Every Apply needs user approval; package removal has no automatic undo. Method and safeguards
Throughput & bufferbloat	Opt-in loaded-latency and throughput tests graded on the Waveform scale; external Waveform results can be imported and graded by the same code
UDP quality	Authenticated UDP measurements to a responder you choose, separate upload/download loss, RTT/jitter and baseline comparison. The portable package includes the responder and setup instructions
DNS resolvers	Benchmark configured and extra resolvers, apply the fastest one or restore DHCP
Recommendations	Ranked, evidence-based suggestions sent to the tuning plan, plus router guidance where the fix is not on the PC
Tuning	Driver-advertised NIC properties, interface state and power, QoS policies and interrupt affinity, all through one allowlisted, reversible write path
Records	Versioned reports, local history, before/after comparison, trends, drift checks, continuous monitoring with a watchdog, and redacted exports
Languages	English, Español, Русский, 简体中文

How a change is applied

Start with Dashboard → Start diagnosis. No symptom questionnaire or server address is required. Windows selects the interface used to reach the public reference; SockTuner shows that choice, driver, observations, uncertainty and suggested next steps. Optional traffic tests and privileged captures stay separate. Review suggested actions offers individual unchecked changes derived from that run; leaving all unchecked is a valid result. A manual use-case profile remains an explicit advanced choice.

1. Choose the relevant measured actions. Ordinary NIC writes require an archived physical model, driver identity and matching live constraints. Selected unarchived power/offload and Intel/Realtek templates are available as explicitly experimental choices when the installed driver advertises valid values. They require confirmation and do not mark the hardware as verified. The balanced gaming preset preserves wake-on-LAN and leaves offloads unchanged; the aggressive preset is an opt-in trial with before/after measurement and rollback.
2. Preview builds a dry run through a read-only store: current versus proposed, what rollback would restore, and the restart requirement.
3. Apply asks for the one-time preview consent, then elevates. High-risk or experimental changes need APPLY typed to confirm, and so does any change made over a remote session.
4. The elevated worker re-reads the driver, refuses anything it no longer advertises or that drifted since the preview, writes, reads the value back, records an audit entry, then restarts the adapter and checks it returns to its previous link state.
5. Undo any tuning audit entry to exactly the values it captured.

Driver-store cleanup and ancillary-device disable are separately confirmed host actions, not tuning transactions with automatic undo. Cleanup only removes unused older packages; disabled devices can be re-enabled from Device Manager. Neither action runs automatically.

SockTuner never invents a value or a range. Uncharacterised NIC properties are read-only.

Did it help? repeats the exact baseline profile and resolved target, checks adapter, address, gateway, link speed and Wi-Fi association, and asks you to restore the same external conditions. Fewer than ten endpoint replies, changed conditions, or legacy reports without interface context yield insufficient data. Changes below the measurement's noise floor show no demonstrated difference; mixed results remain a trade-off. The audit history offers exact-value rollback for reversible actions. See diagnosis method and verification.

Getting started

Requirements: Windows 10 22H2 or a supported Windows 11 release, x64. The app and the optional UDP responder are self-contained executables: no separate .NET runtime installation is needed.

1. Download the latest SockTuner-<version>-win-x64.zip from Releases and extract it.
2. Preview builds are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen will warn on first launch. Check the archive against the .sha256 file published next to it before running it.
3. Start SockTuner.exe as a normal user. It only reads until you accept the live-changes notice (shown at the first write, or from Preferences → Live network changes); each write then asks for elevation on its own.
4. For UDP quality, enable Advanced mode and run UdpResponder/SockTuner.UdpResponder.exe on a second computer using the included README. The app does not create firewall rules or install a service.

Updates: Dashboard → Updates checks the stable or preview channel on GitHub Releases. Automatic installation verifies the SHA-256 checksum and requires both the installed app and the update to be signed by the same publisher, so it becomes available once releases are signed.

Help improve hardware compatibility

SockTuner exposes only settings the installed NIC driver actually advertises, so it needs reports from real hardware — especially Intel I219/I225/I226, Realtek RTL8111/RTL8125, Killer/Qualcomm, Broadcom and Marvell adapters, and any machine on Windows 10.

1. Refresh the inventory, then open Preferences → Help improve SockTuner.
2. Choose Create compatibility report, review the plain-text JSON, and let SockTuner open the GitHub issue form.
3. Attach the JSON file to the issue.

The report contains the adapter model, driver version, OS version, and driver-advertised keywords and constraints. It excludes current setting values, persistent adapter and PnP identifiers, MAC and IP addresses, routes, DNS servers, INF and user paths, machine name and exact timestamps. Creating it is read-only. The capability archive lists the hardware covered so far.

Hardware covered so far

SockTuner shows Verified adapter next to an adapter whose model is in this list, and Adapter not verified for any other physical adapter. Those remain diagnostic targets; only the explicitly experimental template allowlist can offer unarchived writes, always bounded by the live driver and user confirmation. Verified means the driver's properties were captured on real hardware and characterised — not that every setting helps. Even a verified model needs the exact characterised driver and matching structured property constraints before a write is allowed. Older reports with only keyword names cannot authorise writes. The list is regenerated from the capability archive.

Vendor	Adapter	Driver versions seen
ASIX	AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet	1.18.19.1128
Intel	Ethernet Controller I226-V	2.1.5.7
Intel	Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168	19.51.38.2
MediaTek	Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 (RZ616)	3.6.0.1425
MediaTek	Wi-Fi 7 MT7925	5.7.0.4669
Realtek	PCIe 2.5GbE Family Controller (RTL8125)	10.79.50.1003, 1125.20.729.2024, 1125.21.903.2024, 1125.27.50.919, 1125.31.50.603
Realtek	Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller	1125.20.729.2024, 1125.28.20.1224
Realtek	8852BE Wi-Fi 6	6001.15.157.0
Realtek	8852CE Wi-Fi 6E	6001.16.172.0
Realtek	8922AE Wi-Fi 7	6102.24.146.0

Still missing: Intel I219 and I225, Realtek RTL8111, Killer/Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell, other Intel Wi-Fi generations, and Windows 10. If your adapter says "not verified", use Report this adapter… in the Tuning plan.

Building from source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK on Windows.

git clone https://github.com/PrimeBuild-pc/SockTuner.git
cd SockTuner
dotnet build SockTuner.sln
dotnet test SockTuner.sln
dotnet run --project src/SockTuner

Built with C#, WPF and the Fluent theme: a mature, native toolkit for a Windows-only administrative tool, with no browser runtime. Read the architecture for how inventory, diagnostics and the write path fit together.

License

MIT. Compatibility reports and bug reports are welcome through the GitHub issue forms; see SECURITY.md for reporting vulnerabilities.