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TECHINFO-0020558 (Excerpt)
TOPIC
How is the Memory Available as reported by the "About this Macintosh..." dialog related to Open Transport's actual memory requirements.
DISCUSSION
How is the Memory Available as reported by the "About this Macintosh..." dialog related to Open Transport's actual memory requirements.
Answer: The "About this Macintosh..." dialog reports on both the total free memory and the largest block of contiguous free memory. In practice, the latter figure is a better indicator of whether an additional application can be launched.
If a user repeatedly opens (launches) and closes (quits) multiple applications that use Internet networking services, and if the user has set Open Transport TCP/IP preferences to load networking services only when needed, this can, over time, result in a situation where Open Transport loads into memory "between" other running applications. This "memory fragmentation", in turn, can result in a smaller value reported by "About this Macintosh..." for free contiguous memory. In extreme cases, this could limit the number of concurrent applications that a user could run.
If this situation arises, Apple recommends use of the Advanced Mode of the TCP/IP Control Panel to access the Options dialog; remove the "X" in the "Load only when needed" option. After restarting the system, Open Transport TCP/IP will load when called on by an application for the first time, but will then remain loaded. This will help avoid memory fragmentation.
Open Transport 1.1.1 includes some additional internal changes designed to reduce the frequency and significance of memory fragmentation due to the dynamic loading and unloading of TCP/IP. Depending on the pattern of use, however, it may still be desirable to disable the "load only when needed" option as discussed above. 
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