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Vista's 'Next Gen' TCP/IP Stack

boyko.at.netqos writes "Microsoft's new Vista TCP/IP stack might be beneficial to businesses looking to increase use of their IT infrastructure... if they did it right. Ted Romer at Network Performance Daily writes: '[Vista] now allows us to throttle outbound traffic at a client or server. For example, you can throttle the bandwidth of a particular subnet to a particular server, giving some departments more access to the servers that they need. You can even restrict outgoing bandwidth for certain peer-to-peer applications like bit torrent. This shaping can also be handy when applied to servers, allowing less bandwidth for certain users/departments, and more for others. While consumers may debate whether Vista is a worthwhile upgrade, I believe it to be important for enterprise customers who will best be able to put Vista's capabilities to their fullest potential. Of course, I'm getting it for DirectX 10 games, but that's just me.'"

259 comments

  1. Wondershaper by Werrismys · · Score: 1

    Why not just put a linuz router with wondershaper in between?

    --
    'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
    1. Re:Wondershaper by robzon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because Linux doesn't have the super marketing powers.

    2. Re:Wondershaper by El+Torico · · Score: 1

      Judging by the name, I thought that this was a new type of corset; I'm expecting late-night TV commercials any day now.

      Seriously, I did a cursory Google search on this and didn't find anything that provides feature details. Do you have any links?

      --
      In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
    3. Re:Wondershaper by Loconut1389 · · Score: 2

      should you have to?
      I'm a linux fan, don't get me wrong- but if you can save yourself a box or two, why not use the vista shaper?

    4. Re:Wondershaper by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 1

      Because it's probably far easier to set up a dedicated firewall/router/traffic shaper (not to mention much more highly customizable) on a linux box than it probably will be to do the same thing on a Vista box.

    5. Re:Wondershaper by Loconut1389 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      traffic shaping still isn't a breeze to setup under linux and keep in mind in many windows-centric environments, people just don't have the linux experience.

      Are you speaking from experience on both fronts? (honest question) Is the vista shaping that difficult?

      Linux is great for many things and many people, but sometimes the simpler solution works for a lot of people.

    6. Re:Wondershaper by MicrosoftRepresentit · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, right...because if history teaches us anything, its that Linux is easier to use then Windows.

    7. Re:Wondershaper by orasio · · Score: 1

      Because a windows vista machine (hardware + licenses) could be too much money for a traffic shaping router.
      There are so many providers, and so many good, inexpensive solutions, that there is no reason to even think of MS for that kind of stuff.

    8. Re:Wondershaper by MeNeXT · · Score: 1

      The people setting up these solutions are not looking for simple solutions, they are looking for solutions that work.

      I do not see myself setting up such an environment as described above and asking the server to do the shaping. I would shape it on the router or the switch.

      --
      DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
    9. Re:Wondershaper by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, it's expensive. Are you going to waste a box that can run Vista on that? A box that can run shorewall and traffic shaping is a P100 with 64MB RAM, which can be found for free.

      You have two options:
      1. The Vista box shapes traffic for itself and nothing else. This isn't terribly effective as to have a good effect you need to shape all of the traffic, giving different hosts different priority.

      2. You have the Vista box as a firewall for the network. In this case it's expensive, can be broken into, and if it is, you have a major mess because all your traffic will be going through it.

      An old P100 with 64MB RAM running shorewall is practically invulnerable. No ports need to be open, excepting for SSH from the internal network, or not even that. You can run it from CompactFlash and have it with no moving parts at all. It'll quietly sit there for years shoveling packets back and forth with zero problems. It doesn't accept connections, it has no open ports of public services -- it's impossible to break into barring a kernel bug in the TCP stack.

    10. Re:Wondershaper by Ferzerp · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's obvious that no one has RTFA....

      "(Granted, this QoS doesn't guarantee anything, it just marks the packet in Windows and it is up to your network infrastructure to honor those tags.) "

      Vista supports Diffserv tagging based on the user/application/whatever, enforced via group policy. It's up to your network hardware to actually do the shaping.

    11. Re:Wondershaper by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful
      traffic shaping still isn't a breeze to setup under linux and keep in mind in many windows-centric environments, people just don't have the linux experience.


      Even in Windows-centric environments, many businesses do not and will not use a Windows PC to do things like traffic shaping. Firewalls, routers, etc. of any type are generally going to be dedicated-purpose devices from companies like Cisco, Juniper, CheckPoint, etc., not PCs or other general-purpose computing devices, and usually not even PCs running Linux. Why? Better performance, better security, ease of maintenance, higher reliability, the list goes on.
    12. Re:Wondershaper by GIL_Dude · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Exactly. And if using Group Policy you can easily set it to give say sap.exe high priority and iexplore.exe and firefox.exe low priority (if that would be right for your business). That way, if sap.exe uses port 80 as well you aren't artificially restricting it at the router/switch.

    13. Re:Wondershaper by indifferent+children · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Yeah, right...because if history teaches us anything, its that Linux is easier to use then Windows.

      If "easier to use" means "requires less knowledge", then Linux might not be "easier to use". But if "easier to use" means "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", then Linux is much "easier to use".

      --
      Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
    14. Re:Wondershaper by jZnat · · Score: 1

      Network admins (you know, the guys who know how to use Cisco hardware) should be able to implement a firewall like this quite easily. The other employees don't have to worry about a thing...

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
    15. Re:Wondershaper by xtracto · · Score: 1

      An old P100 with 64MB RAM running shorewall is practically invulnerable. No ports need to be open, excepting for SSH from the internal network, or not even that. You can run it from CompactFlash and have it with no moving parts at all. It'll quietly sit there for years shoveling packets back and forth with zero problems. It doesn't accept connections, it has no open ports of public services -- it's impossible to break into barring a kernel bug in the TCP stack.

      That is quite interesting. I have been thinking in creating a PC with flash memory (I preffer SD memory). I would love if it was possible to install Linux in a SD flash disk or even better to create a RAID array of SD disks in order to have as you say a machine without moving parts. However, I do not know what to use in order to replace the power source, I would love to have a power source without a fan, I believe it is possible, or at least not to have a huge power source. Maybe using a laptop charger or something like that...

      I believe a P3 800 MHZ with 512 MB ram and 4GB of SD flash would run really smoothly with something like Xubuntu installed.

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    16. Re:Wondershaper by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

      That old P100 pci bus likely can't handle gig-e sppeds much less 2 gig-e nics

    17. Re:Wondershaper by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Because for the price of Vista, you can buy a box to run Linux on. And then you have another box to use.

      Of course, if you don't want/need another box, then Vista could be worthwhile.

      After all, it's got those awesome new clock features.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    18. Re:Wondershaper by oojah · · Score: 1

      CF is the key here as it can be interfaced directly to PATA and appears as a normal drive.

      Cheers,

      Roger

      --
      Do you have any better hostages?
    19. Re:Wondershaper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have gig-e speed connections to the internet? Must be nice.

      Otherwise I suspect your comment is irrelevant.

    20. Re:Wondershaper by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      ummm but the blurb was like: it's nice to upgrade to vista because of its redesigned TCP/IP stack with shaping. Somebody else says, but, linux already has that for ages. So now the question is not use linux or vista, the question is: is it a good idea to upgrade to the resource hog vista to get advantage of functionality available on other platforms? My answer as usual: if you want to spend money to have peace of mind go mac, else go linux. Nobody gets fired for using microsoft, but everybody gets burned.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    21. Re:Wondershaper by dch24 · · Score: 1
      replace the power source, I would love to have a power source without a fan
      http://www.google.com/search?q=fanless+power+suppl y
    22. Re:Wondershaper by Lord+Crc · · Score: 1

      You have gig-e speed connections to the internet? Must be nice.
      Otherwise I suspect your comment is irrelevant.


      Well the article talks about how you can throttle speeds to various departments, which may very well, if not usually, be on the same LAN and is thus likely using gigabit connections (from the server at least).

    23. Re:Wondershaper by vadim_t · · Score: 1

      It's best done with CompactFlash. CF actually has an IDE interface, and all that you need to use it as a hard disk is an adapter that simply provides a connector of the right shape. No drivers or anything else needed. The only problem is that at least on my card there's no DMA, so data transfer is slow. On the other hand, seek latency is awesome.

      I've heard some rumors that newer CF can do DMA, but haven't seen it myself.

    24. Re:Wondershaper by Shaiken · · Score: 1

      4GB?
      I've had Linux running on a 8MB CF card, with more than 4MB to spare.

    25. Re:Wondershaper by pjbass · · Score: 1

      If someone is concerned with traffic shaping, they probably have some clue as to how networks and network flows work. Given that, if they can't figure out how to use the interface to the various QoS solutions, then 1) they're a manager pissed off their web traffic is too slow, or 2) they just need to spend some time with either interface to figure it out.

      I have used tc in Linux very heavily, and it can get complicated when specifying filters. I wouldn't expect someone with no idea of what bandwidth allocation is to use it effectively.

    26. Re:Wondershaper by VENONA · · Score: 1

      Not so. Consider the common scenario of a firewall w/ 3 NICs.

      - One is relatively low bandwidth, to the cloud.
      - One is relatively high bandwidth, to the protected LAN.
      - One is relatively high bandwidth, to the DMZ.

      This really is common, for reasons as silly as failure to do split/split DNS when you should, to entirely valid reasons such as network backup speeds, working with CPU-limited apps on the DMZ, or just the high cost of cloud feeds and speeds.

      --
      What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
    27. Re:Wondershaper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      except we aren't talking about DMZ and internet traffic, We are talking about NORMAL client server activity in a department, you really think your p100 will handle 10,000 clients accessing internal intranet, file servers, databases etc? what vista does is allows you to predefine traffic limitations INSIDE your organisation, eg. Users in department XYZ can only download at 100kbs from servers ABC while users in department EFG can do it at 1mbps. All WITHOUT the need of an extra dodgy bottleneck of a p100 that will likely fall over when it sees 2gbps traffic hitting it.

    28. Re:Wondershaper by ultranova · · Score: 1

      An old P100 with 64MB RAM running shorewall is practically invulnerable. No ports need to be open, excepting for SSH from the internal network, or not even that. You can run it from CompactFlash and have it with no moving parts at all.

      Or you could just boot from a hard disk as normal, and as part of the boot process create a RAM disk, copy everything there, and use hdparm to set the disk to spin down 1 minute after the last access. Would propably require a custom init that would chroot to the RAM disk before continuing a boot process, thought.

      Yep, a disk that has nothing but LILO, the kernel image, a disk image and a custom static-compiled init that just creates the RAMDISK, copies the disk image there, mounts it, chroots there, and execs the real init there (which spins down the original disk). Would that work ?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  2. Words to strike fear into any heart by PHAEDRU5 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "redesigned from the ground up"

    --
    668: Neighbour of the Beast
    1. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, its not the freebsd stack anymore?

    2. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by Gordonjcp · · Score: 1

      The whole thing - the whole new Vista kernel - smells suspiciously FreeBSD-like to me. Really, it does.

    3. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by q-the-impaler · · Score: 1

      Really? You know Beano (R) helps with that. Come now, it's just a joke.

      --
      Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
    4. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by YU+Nicks+NE+Way · · Score: 2, Interesting
      So, its not the freebsd stack anymore?
      No, and it hasn't been since 1998's release of Windows 2000. Remember the introduction of a "multithreaded zero-copy TCP/IP stack"? Yeah -- that was years before Linux or FreeBSD had one.
    5. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was Microsoft's multithreaded, zero copy TCP/IP stack that was neither multithreaded nor zero copy. Yes... yes... I remember it well. I remember the marketing and the subsequent debunking of it.

    6. Re:Words to strike fear into any heart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I remember 1998's release of Windows 2000 that was released to manufacturing in December 1999 and released to the public in January 2000.

      You're a veritable font of factual information, so please, do tell us more.

  3. At least it's now easier to identify Vista by rapidmax · · Score: 1

    Using TCP/IP stack fingerprinting...

    1. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by LehiNephi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Up until now, there have been a grand total of ZERO reasons for me to be interested in Vista. None of the new features hold any draw for me. It's good to see that there's finally something worthwhile in it--traffic shaping at the machine level is a good thing.

      --
      Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
    2. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by Da+Fokka · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't forget about the transparent windows!

    3. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      You had to bring *that* up... Now I'll never get it out of my head.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    4. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I realize it's a joke... But still.

      Beryl is in the FC6 repos now, so there's no more need for 'transparent windows' any longer.

    5. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by SEMW · · Score: 2, Funny

      None of the new features hold any draw for me. It's good to see that there's finally something worthwhile in it--traffic shaping at the machine level is a good thing. When you say "It's good to see that there's finally something worthwhile in it"... This isn't a feature that's just been added the day before RTM; it's been there quite a while. Might I suggest that instead of saying that "none of the features hold any draw for me" and them immediately following that up with a stantement that you weren't even aware of at least one of the new features, you take the time to actually find out about the features new to Vista, and *then* decide whether any of the features interest you; rather than assuming that if a feature is of worth it will eventually float by you in the form of a Slashdot news story...
      --
      What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
    6. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 1

      As much as I am going to sound like a MS apologist: Go actually take a look at it before spouting off.
      Vista has some nice features built into it. For starters they finally stole the way OSX has been keeping users from using full administrator access to run every program. Kernel mode drivers are now severely limited. And both the system folders and the registry now get virtualized when a stupid programmer decides that he really has to make changes that he shouldn't be. It's overall handling of networking is much better (my system doesn't hang while I'm connecting to a network share). And, most importantly, they added a great chess game to it. ;)
      On the down side, Microsoft has once again decided to bloat the hell out of their OS. While Aero Glass is nice to look at, it really does seem to cause performance problems. So, set you system to run "Windows Vista Basic", problem solved. Also, some of the keyboard shortcuts I am used to are gone. In XP <Windows Key> - U - <Enter> shuts down my computer, this is no longer true in Vista. Drivers are still hit and miss, My Creative Live! sound card does not have a Vista driver, though the XP one is working at the moment. I still can't get both displays functioning at the same time on my laptop while docked. Also, the various laptop function keys are not working.
      Given that I run a Windows only environment, due to our primary application not having any sort of replacement, Vista is looking like a good upgrade. The additions to the group policies and the user handling alone are enough to convince me to want to switch.

      --
      Necessity is the mother of invention.
      Laziness is the father.
    7. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by Pantheraleo2k3 · · Score: 1

      I've heard that Aero Glass, if you have a graphics card which supports it, is actually less demanding because it offloads graphics processing onto the GPU, though I haven't heard any real-world test results.

    8. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by VENONA · · Score: 1

      A lot of people here don't really follow Microsoft operating systems. A 90% desktop share doesn't make you relevant to all people--just 90%. There are a lot of 10% types here, as you might expect from a service running Free software. The burden is on Microsoft marketing people to have sufficiently gotten the word out, not on all Slashdot users to be fully cognizant of all features of an OS that may not be relevant to them. Particularly as traffic shaping has been available in the Unix-y community since, well, forever.

      I freely admit that Microsoft was an excellent marketing company. But lots of people have mostly heard about delays, features that have been pulled (in the case of a filesystem, pulled continually from each new release, for over a decade), etc. I say 'was' an excellent marketing company, because they seem to have fallen over. Vista has been released to corporate clients with little fanfare, and even Ballmer seemed more relieved than anything else.

      It will get a ton of market share, but that's as much, or more, a function of the difficulty *average* consumers will face in buying a consumer PC without Vista installed, once it's released in that arena. Most consumers don't even know that there *are* other OSs, save perhaps Apple, and they probably still think of that as expensive (you still hear that, even on Slashdot) gear. But that's the result of *previous* Microsoft marketing success, and the resultant monopoly. I deal with several shops that are (very) predominantly Microsoft. None of them are all, "OMG, we must have teh Vista."

      From my perspective, they see Vista as long-delayed, expensive to adopt, and very much an only incremental improvement. So, is the Microsoft marketing machine resting on its laurels, knowing a monopoly doesn't really *have* to do much? Or is there really just nothing compelling about this release? Or could all these clients (mom and pop to Fortune 500) simply not be getting teh wunder that be Vista? Which, in itself, would be a marketing failure, as the opinion is unanimous.

      YMMV, but that's what I'm seeing.

      --
      What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
    9. Re:At least it's now easier to identify Vista by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 1

      Might be, though both systems I have run it on have been bogged down a bit by it. Mobility Radeon X700 and NVidia 6600GS, neither of which is a top end card, but neither is exactly ancient hardware either. Then again, how much of that is the interface and how much of that is drivers is hard to tell.

      --
      Necessity is the mother of invention.
      Laziness is the father.
  4. Will it... by Threni · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...let me choose how much bandwidth to allocate to each app, and their relative priority? I want my browser to go first, then Google talk, then any updates (OS, virus checker, firewall) and finally P2P. It's quite annoying that I can't do that on XP. Perhaps it's a tricky problem though.

    1. Re:Will it... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative
      It's quite tricky because, typically, the TCP/IP stack has no knowledge of which application is the originator of a particular packet. The application talks to the very top layers of the network stack, and says 'send this buffer to this socket.' This then talks to the lower levels of the stack. On OpenBSD[1] you could conceivably create a virtual network interface for each application that was bridged with the real one and added a tag to all packets, which could then be used for filtering. It would be possible to add an mbuf tag to the packet with the originating process as soon as it was created, although I don't believe this is currently supported. I might have a poke at the code and see how hard it would be...


      And, probably, other systems. I'm just most familiar with OpenBSD's filtering.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Will it... by georgeb · · Score: 1

      From the iptables(8) manpage, under MATCH EXTENSIONS:

      owner
      This module attempts to match various characteristics of the packet creator, for locally-generated packets.

      The characteristics available are: owner UID/GID, PID and commmand name of the originator (i.e. the program). Combine that with connection marking and you can build some pretty decent shaping per-application.

    3. Re:Will it... by Threni · · Score: 1

      > It's quite tricky because, typically, the TCP/IP stack has no knowledge of which application is the originator of a particular
      > packet.

      Doesn't the TCP/IP stack belong to/exist within the OS? And the OS knows the app, right?

    4. Re:Will it... by spikedvodka · · Score: 2, Interesting

      personally I like to use the l7filter additions to iptables http://l7-filter.sourceforge.net/protocols

      That way, I can set the priority based on what the traffic is, at the router level

      works pretty well too

      --
      I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
    5. Re:Will it... by beuges · · Score: 4, Informative

      Windows' OS updates already assume lowest priority, via BITS. BITS is available to be used by any application that wants to use it, so if antivirus/firewall vendors decided to make use of it, rather than rolling their own solutions, all those updates can happen at lowest priority also. It's QOS requesting lowest priority, rather than highest priority.

      I'm not sure if you can specify individual priority levels, but the OS already allows applications to download using the lowest priority.

    6. Re:Will it... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Any well-designed OS will separate bits of the kernel. The more parts are interdependent, the harder it is to debug, and if there's one part of your system you want to have as few bugs it's the kernel, since a bug there can affect all applications. As such, most kernel components in a well-designed OS communicate across well-defined interfaces.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:Will it... by nekokoneko · · Score: 1

      Well, that would break the layer separation on the TCP/IP architecture. The lower layers aren't supposed to be concerned with the details of the application.

    8. Re:Will it... by timeOday · · Score: 1
      Here's my script to do this in Linux. What it does is prioritize these types of outbound traffic, in order: voip (vonage), ssh (to or from my domain), web browsing, scp, other people browsing my website, other (filesharing, mail).

      Mostly it works by discriminating on the basis of source or destination port. A couple apps are nice enough to set the "type of service" bits in the ip header, so you don't need to look at port numbers.

    9. Re:Will it... by georgeb · · Score: 1

      Sure, l7filter works well for what it was designed to do.
      However, it won't allow you to mark traffic coming from, say, firefox and konqueror separately, as both are http traffic.
      That's where owner matching comes into play. It's the right tool for the right job, really...

    10. Re:Will it... by Threni · · Score: 1

      > Well, that would break the layer separation on the TCP/IP architecture. The lower layers aren't supposed to be concerned with the
      > details of the application.

      So is it a limitation of the architecture that an OS/App designer is unable to use their bandwidth as flexibly as they might?

    11. Re:Will it... by GIL_Dude · · Score: 1

      yes it will do that.

    12. Re:Will it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All I want is the equivalent of "top" that shows me how much each application is using...

    13. Re:Will it... by dave420 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can do that - XP has a QoS service that can do exactly what you want. I use it when I'm at work to prioritise my RDP over any torrents downloading, and to make sure my mp3 streams from home don't get choked.

      WinTC - a small service used to configure the Windows QoS service.

      If that doesn't do it for you, you could download something like NetLimiter, and use that to manage your bandwidth.

    14. Re:Will it... by mi · · Score: 1
      Mostly it works by discriminating on the basis of source or destination port. A couple apps are nice enough to set the "type of service" bits in the ip header, so you don't need to look at port numbers.

      So, if my torrent-client marks its packets as "ssh", your setup will grant them a higher priority whatever the port they are heading to? I'll make a note of this...

      Joking aside, what this means is that this tag-based shaping only makes sense only on systems/networks within the same administrative domain — you have to trust the source of the packets to label them correctly.

      Or, you could make your side of the conversation check the labels and discard the lying packets (have your torrent-application ignore the incoming packets, which mislabel themselves as "ssh"). But this has to be done on the host itself, and can not be delegated to a central firewall somewhere.

      I wonder, how exactly Vista is doing this — I bet, they just trust the source :-)

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    15. Re:Will it... by jZnat · · Score: 1

      I think the point of the script is for personal use. With it, you can browse the web and generally use your computer while also serving sshd, httpd, and bittorrent with minimal slowdown.

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
    16. Re:Will it... by timeOday · · Score: 1
      True. Managing groups competing for bandwidth is a separate issue. Assuming you had some site policy to do that, each group might still want control over how their own parcel of bandwidth was prioritized. That's where per-application prioritization like this comes into play.

      In a residential setting, do I expect this script to pry bandwidth away from my neighbors? Of course not, my ISP manages that. But smart queueing on my end manages whatever upstream is allocated to me. In practice, it means VOIP and ssh still work well even if people are downloading big files from me.

    17. Re:Will it... by bazorg · · Score: 1

      This is going to be so perfect when the adware, spyware, spambots, etc. start pwning your machine. They will have the means to offer you 5% bandwidth for your apps while doing what the botmaster commands. With XP that wasn't possible.

    18. Re:Will it... by zdzichu · · Score: 1

      At least in Linux it's doable. There is "owner" firewall matching rule:
      OWNER match v1.3.5 options:
      [!] --uid-owner userid Match local uid
      [!] --gid-owner groupid Match local gid
      [!] --pid-owner processid Match local pid
      [!] --sid-owner sessionid Match local sid
      [!] --cmd-owner name Match local command name

      as a result of match, packet could be -j CLASSIFY'ed to any defined traffic queue. As usual, there is a possibility, but noone packaged it desktop-friendly way.

      --
      :wq
    19. Re:Will it... by nekokoneko · · Score: 1

      No, but it should be handled at the application level, not at the TCP/IP stack.

    20. Re:Will it... by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1
      browser to go first, then Google talk, then any updates (OS, virus checker, firewall) and finally P2P

      Except it won't let you allocate any packets to P2P because only dirty, evil pirates use P2P.

      --
      That is all.
    21. Re:Will it... by tengwar · · Score: 1
      On similar lines but with less detail, I've been wondering whether it would be a good idea to allocate different IP addresses to different processes. IPv6 has enough address space to make this feasible. Currently personal firewalls (Zone Alarm, Little Snitch et al.) do a reasonable job of stopping spyware, but they have to run on the same machine as the processes they are guarding. If processes had different IP addresses on a single host, it would allow external conventional firewalls to take over a large part of this role, and would also address per-application packet shaping. You'd need something like DHCP to hand out addresses to processes, possibly based on a combination of the program (SHA hash?) and the user executing it.

      It would potentially allow a network/fw admin to set policies such as "Internet Explorer may only be used to browse intranet sites"; "These versions of Firefox may be used to browse externally".

    22. Re:Will it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It's quite annoying that I can't do that on XP.


      You can. Just do a little search for TCMON.EXE.

      The problem is that the majority of windows apps are not QoS aware or use the Windows TC Api.

      I found it very frustrating that Apache was not (and will never be) QoS aware. (and none of the bandwidth control modules were compatible with the windows platform - and before anyone says anything - yes, Apache2 is perfectly stable on Windows if configured properly - its all in the MPM settings)

      There is however a solution to create flows for non QoS aware applications: WinTC

      Though with a little knowledge you can use TCMON to create your own flows, but they will not persist across a reboot unless scripted to be recreated on startup.

      The trick is whether or not your application uses a consistent or predictable port or range for its tcp traffic.
    23. Re:Will it... by scdeimos · · Score: 1
      It's quite tricky because, typically, the TCP/IP stack has no knowledge of which application is the originator of a particular packet.

      Actually, it's completely trivial. All TCP (and UDP) activity from apps (and services) is made through the winsock and wsock32 DLL's and it's trivial to figure out the pid and tid of the caller using GetCurrentProcess() and GetCurrentThread(). I believe that this is how NetLimiter has always worked, setting itself up as a "Device Filter", and now Microsoft is "building in" that functionality to their own version of NetLimiter.

    24. Re:Will it... by Threni · · Score: 1

      > No, but it should be handled at the application level, not at the TCP/IP stack.

      But an app doesn't know what it is more/less important than. Surely the best it can do is to have the same sort of priority level that processes have (low,high, realtime etc) and have the OS manage it?

  5. Is this a slashvertisment ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    because it sure reads like one
    Microsoft is desperate to get business interested in their Vista product so will trot about all manner of reasons to buy it, but business are not biting, unless this Vista can make workers type faster or calc spreadsheets quicker or email faster than there is NO productivity gains unless wowing the coworker with a 3D AIGLX/Beryl like desktop counts as productive

    if an Enterprise is worried about client bandwidth they would already be using a tool dedicated for the job like, say a Router

    1. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by dbIII · · Score: 2, Informative
      unless this Vista can make workers type faster or calc spreadsheets quicker or email faster than there is NO productivity gains

      Actually there probably will be. My coworkers on XP spend surprising amounts of time staring at the screen waiting for the machine to allow user input again - inproving this WILL improve productivity by a few minutes a day. The ones that do not suffer this have dual processor systems.

      That said - moving to *nix the gnome desktop with remote appications open can suck intensely if the network is busy - one window that is slow to refresh can lock the screen up for minutes which should never happen under X windows.

    2. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by davygrvy · · Score: 1

      Quality-Of-Service starts at the application level.

      --
      -=[ place .sig here ]=-
    3. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by garcia · · Score: 1

      Actually there probably will be. My coworkers on XP spend surprising amounts of time staring at the screen waiting for the machine to allow user input again - inproving this WILL improve productivity by a few minutes a day. The ones that do not suffer this have dual processor systems.

      Well, at work I use Access and am frequently staring at the screen waiting for it to allow input (and frequently hoping it won't hang the rest of the system). I have a feeling that Vista won't stop that behavior unless they have changed how Access behaves under it.

    4. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      Would not something like IPTables be the same thing? Maybe using Linux between the Real World and XP/Vista might be a very clever strategy in the long run.

      "Slowly, one by one, the Penguins steal my sanity." - Unknown

    5. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by itlurksbeneath · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have noticed this in a lot of Windows apps as well and it dumbfounds me that, after all these years, Microsoft programmers still haven't got threaded programming into their heads.

      I mean, why does Access requesting data from a network database freeze up the entire machine (or at least the whole TCP/IP stack)? And nothing frustrates me more than Outlook. When you're typing an email message and Outlook "requests data from server" in the background, freezes your input into the current window. Damn, guys.. do that crap in a background thread and stop interrupting the UI for something not related to what I'm doing at the moment.

      The other thing that kills me is the fact that the window is a part of the application and not a part of the desktop. I mean, when something freezes, you can't easily iconize, resize, or do pretty much anything with the window the app is contained in. IMHO, the UNIX window environments did that right - the window is owned by the window manager and tells the application how big it should be or if it got resized, not the other way around.

      I use Linux at home, but have to use Windows in the corporate world (and yes, we're sprinting like mad towards a Vista roll-out on 40,000 some odd desktops in '07). I haven't heard if Vista fixes any of my pet peeves, but I'm hoping, at least as far as sanity at work goes, that it does.

      --
      Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
    6. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If this were an article about how a *NIX distribution has redesigned their tcp/ip stack to include some new feature, there would be no complaining. This is indeed an interesting thing to consider, especially for those of us in the world that actually have to interact and implement Windows. You might want to think about turning your paranoia down.

    7. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by jlarocco · · Score: 1
      Actually there probably will be. My coworkers on XP spend surprising amounts of time staring at the screen waiting for the machine to allow user input again - inproving this WILL improve productivity by a few minutes a day. The ones that do not suffer this have dual processor systems.

      That sounds pretty far fetched to me. I don't know what you do, but most people don't spend that much time waiting on the OS. And if Vista has made a reputation for itself so far, it hasn't been for running faster on existing hardware.

    8. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by dbIII · · Score: 1
      That sounds pretty far fetched to me.

      If you find that far fetched you probably don't even notice you are doing it for a few seconds at a time dozens of times a day - just staring at the screen waiting for it to give you the keyboard and mouse back. Try using systems that do not have explorer.exe or MS Windows systems that have with more than one processor and you'll see that you won't be waiting for screen refreshes. Failing that try win2k or windows2003.

    9. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by Damastus+the+WizLiz · · Score: 1

      Instead people would be saying how they have been doing it all along using code they or someone else wrote ages ago.

      --
      I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
    10. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by elgaard · · Score: 1

      > Would not something like IPTables be the same thing?

      ip-tables and some way of managing and monitoring it.

      I use http://www.adsl-optimizer.dk/

      Which works great, i.e. it makes my VoIP phone usable.

    11. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 1

      I mean, why does Access requesting data from a network database freeze up the entire machine ... Damn, guys.. do that crap in a background thread Good sign of a "mature code base" — it's so nasty, they'd rather put a workaround in the OS to support its bad habits than fix it. I remember under NT, Access would peg the CPU at 100% just sitting there. I assume it was actively polling for events it needed to service, probably due to some deficiency in the Win95 message handler (or more likely, to provide some feature). Anybody else remember how Word for the Mac wasn't available under (System 7.5?) for a long time, because apparently the same code base was used for both Windows and the Mac, but the Mac translator/runtime was so nasty and hacked that it took forever to get it working?

      And I suspect most of this is caused by a failure to abstract away enough of the OS, for performance reasons. They wind up tying the software to a particular implementation of a feature, so now subsequent versions of Windows have to provide some kind of hook or wrapper to support it. And when it's a major cash cow like Access or Outlook, they'll do whatever it takes to keep it working.
      --
      Just junk food for thought...
    12. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by Deathlizard · · Score: 1

      Hmm. I thought it was a SlashBash.

      The way the main article reads, it sounds like Microsoft screwed up something. then you read the article and it's about QOS and performance improvements in the stack. Nowhere in the article does it say they "did it wrong".

    13. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Do you redirect folders or sync your "My Documents"? I heard 2003 R2 is supposed to fix this.

    14. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by jlarocco · · Score: 1
      If you find that far fetched you probably don't even notice you are doing it for a few seconds at a time dozens of times a day

      I don't use Windows.

      But assuming the pauses are as bad as you say, are those seconds a day worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade everybody's machine and buy copies of Vista? Most people don't work anywhere near the full time they're supposed to anyway, and it has nothing to do with their OS being slow.

    15. Re:Is this a slashvertisment ? by dbIII · · Score: 1
      But assuming the pauses are as bad as you say, are those seconds a day worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade everybody's machine and buy copies of Vista?

      That is a very good point - but some of those software upgrades are going to happen some day anyway as applications demand it and I hoping the resposiveness issues have been solved for people that end up using it. I think not far past release a new dual core CPU, motherboard, memory and the time required to upgrade may end up cheaper than Vista for that same performance gain. This will probably violate the XP licence anyway - so those on XP may have to go to Vista while those on Win2k will have no problems with hardware upgrades until the application support goes away.

      Most people don't work anywhere near the full time they're supposed to anyway, and it has nothing to do with their OS being slow.

      That is entirely true but with systems where too low a proirity is given to user input it gets very annnoying waiting for the computer to give your interface back and it annoys users a great deal. We shouldn't have systems where inserting a DVD-ROM with a fingerprint on it locks the user out of a 2GHz 2GB machine with WinXP for a couple of minutes. Optical drives behave badly on a lot of other operating systems on PC hardware too - but the autorun on WinXP and the general behaviour of the graphical shell adds a lot to the problem. What an idea - when the system is under as much load as it can handle let's show some animations and do some file size calcualtions and transfer speed that add to I/O and are uselessly wrong!

  6. All Because by jlebrech · · Score: 1

    So that you can't download the latest Linux iso's on bittorrent. And hopefull it could be an open standard and not another ms only product. Then the whole interweb has it and we're screwed.

  7. Enterprise by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Wouldn't enterprise customers have purchased routers that do this five years ago to handle the QoS - and managed switches ten years ago to handle the rest?

    OK - it is nice, but it certainly is not new.

    1. Re:Enterprise by Loconut1389 · · Score: 1

      enterprise customers, probably, but what about the small business?

      Sure, traffic shaping is nothing new, but it's new to windows- which, believe it or not, people actually use. If this can reduce infrastructure costs, even by getting rid of one box, then it's progress.

    2. Re:Enterprise by PingSpike · · Score: 1

      Don't consumer level routers offer some of this functionality these days? My linksys is ancient, but I thought I remember reading the newer models offered some throttling features.

    3. Re:Enterprise by aaronl · · Score: 1

      Given the costs to have Vista capable systems, and paying the non-volume price tags for your licensing, I would say that it isn't useful for small business. Like most of the rest of Vista, customers that cared about these features already bought solutions for them. You can get a packet tagging switch with QoS for a lot less than it will cost to upgrade your dozen Windows systems to Vista. Of course, the vast majority of small businesses don't even really needs those functions.

      Vista is just where MS bundled into the OS half of the products their VARs sold.

    4. Re:Enterprise by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Exactly - and the fine article was talking about how "enterprise customers" would love these "new" features that are probably in every recent ADSL modem made for home use. There are very cool firewalls on network cards that can do this and a lot more too.

    5. Re:Enterprise by spyrochaete · · Score: 1

      This can be done pretty easily on a Catalyst switch by configuring VLANs, but it's nice to have this feature in Windows as well. Active Directory is a handy one-stop-shopping interface for centralized administration. Presumably you'll be able to push group policies and stuff to do minute tasks like allowing a subnet a higher percentage of bandwidth at certain times of day.

    6. Re:Enterprise by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

      Routers don't know protocols. These days, every new application tunnels over HTTP. Routers can't prioritize VoIP-over-HTTP at the expense of Filesharing-over-HTTP.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    7. Re:Enterprise by Sancho · · Score: 1

      These "new features" allow for tagging packets so that routers/switches don't have to guess by either reconstructing the layer-7 or by using dumb methods such as the port used. Vista can tag packets for importance based on some relatively arbitrary critera. This is new to Windows.

      In XP, an application could tag packets itself, but there was no ability for the user or admin to otherwise tag packets. That is what is new here, and it's useful if your networking equipment supports QoS based on the tags.

  8. games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course, I'm getting it for DirectX 10 games, but that's just me

    Just you? Wow, those will be some disappointing sales figures.

  9. Alternatively by eclectro · · Score: 5, Funny

    If that guy in accounting is spending all his time downloading movies off from bittorent, wouldn't it be better to fire him instead of shaping his packets??

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:Alternatively by cycojesus · · Score: 5, Funny

      I am this guy AND I am the son of your boss. Ah, dilemna...

    2. Re:Alternatively by garcia · · Score: 1

      I guess I would hope that this sort of shaping and filtering would be done at a higher level than a Vista machine in a business environment.

    3. Re:Alternatively by MollyB · · Score: 1

      Ah, dilemna... And I thought I was the onliest one who spells that rite! =)
    4. Re:Alternatively by I_HATE_THIS · · Score: 1

      I would rather they shape my packet then completely deny me access to the web, youtube and skype.

    5. Re:Alternatively by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's not a dilemna...

      to be a dilemna there has to be *two* choices

  10. wow! by idlake · · Score: 1

    The innovation! What will MS think of next?<sarcasm>

    1. Re:wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great, now that the parent didn't close his/her sarcasm tag, the rest of the comment are sarcastic! Not.

    2. Re:wow! by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1


      Here you go.

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    3. Re:wow! by idlake · · Score: 1

      The supposed "bug" you point to is losing one of the files when copying two files distinguished only by case from a case sensitive file system to a non-case sensitive file system. Nautilus is a file manager for file systems with UNIX semantics, and those are case sensitive. That's not a bug.

      In general, it simply has no way of knowing what the semantics of some mounted file system are going to be, so if you're using it to manipulate file systems with non-UNIX semantics, all bets are off. The same is true in reverse, for every other file system.

      Of course, this is a common case, and Nautilus probably should recognize it and do something about it. But it's not a bug in Nautilus; at best, it's a missing feature.

  11. Interesting discussion of this at SecurityNow by AngusSF · · Score: 5, Informative

    GRC | Security Now! Transcript of Episode #51 "Vista's Virgin Stack" http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-051.htm

    --
    "A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
    1. Re:Interesting discussion of this at SecurityNow by vadim_t · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uhh, what the heck is that nonsense? I see no actual discussion of anything there.

      This is the "security expert" that never heard of SYN Cookies before, started the whole mess about raw sockets in XP, and ran (or maybe still runs, haven't checked) a port scanner's supposed to scan the ports of the one going to the website, but can be tricked into scanning somebody else.

    2. Re:Interesting discussion of this at SecurityNow by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 1

      It's an, uh, you know, article about, you know, Vista. And you know, it talks about the, you know, network stack. And you know, about Win2000's stack and, you know, where it may have come from, and, you know, about supposed problems in Vista's, you know, stack. And you know, those guys sure say 'you know' an awful, you know, lot.

  12. Create your own reply by Giant+Ape+Skeleton · · Score: 5, Funny

    Big deal. ______ has had this in the kernel since ______.

    --
    The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
    1. Re:Create your own reply by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 1

      Big deal. _Vista_ has had this in the kernel since _beta_.

      (Why can't we underline?)

    2. Re:Create your own reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Big deal. Corn has had this in the kernel since it was a stalk.

    3. Re:Create your own reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Big Deal. _Kentucky_Fried_Chicken_ has had this in the Colonel since _The_Civil_War_.

    4. Re:Create your own reply by alexhard · · Score: 1

      Big Deal. _Kentucky_Fried_Chicken_ has had this in the Colonel since _The_Civil_War_. In Soviet Russia, Kentucky Chicken fries the Colonel!
      --
      Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
  13. Translating microshit's announcement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you have Windoze Vista and want to surf the web or download email, the server must be running and Windoze server software.

  14. Throttle network traffic is great ... by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 1

    Throttle network traffic is great ... if either your network or your server capacity suck.

    --

    I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
  15. Window Scaling and ECN! by amorsen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yay! Now people will hopefully fix their firewalls so I can turn those on again in my Linux boxes.

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  16. Vista's DNS Suffixing by RedBot · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm having problems with Vista's DNS Suffixing:

    - My entire network has the dns suffix : work.intranet and I have a BIND dns server that resolves a.work.intranet and *.a.work.intranet to 192.168.0.2 so that if I ping bbb.a.work.intranet or ccc.a.work.intranet they all resolve to 192.168.0.2 (at least up until Vista)

    - If I ping a.work.intranet it correctly resolves to 192.168.0.2;
    - If I ping a it correctly resolves to 192.168.0.2;
    - If I ping bbb.a.work.intranet it correctly resolves to 192.168.0.2;
    - BUT IF I ping bbb.a it no longer resolves. (could not find host)

    - If I do a nslookup bbb.a it correcly resolves to 192.168.0.2

    So what appears to be happening is that it isn't adding the dns suffix when the domain has more than two parts (xxx.yyy).

    Any ideas how to solve this?

    http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?Pos tID=884630&SiteID=1

    --
    http://blog.ebserver.org
  17. IPV6 .. by rs232 · · Score: 2

    What does Vista TCP/IP do that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6">IPV6 cannot and I don't mean such feetures that are welded to the Vista API.

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
    1. Re:IPV6 .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      I think you're confused here. This is just a specific implementation of TCP/IP, not a different protocol or anything.

    2. Re:IPV6 .. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You know, that will be a useful argument when we're all using IPv6, which we are not. It's useful to wring more performance out of IPv4 since it will be here for a while.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  18. Quoted portion leaves out important bit by BrianRoach · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rather interesting that the quote in the summary here on slashdot skipped this (emphasis mine):

    FTFA: "Vista's ability to use centrally configured group-policies to push out policies to specific users or servers, and allows tagging of packets with the Diffserv code point values, so that our network infrastructure can see the marking and react to it in different ways - whether it's VoIP traffic, or TCP/IP business critical traffic, or web-surfing traffic. (Granted, this QoS doesn't guarantee anything, it just marks the packet in Windows and it is up to your network infrastructure to honor those tags.)"

    So ... it really doesn't do much. It may be slightly more convenient to configure QoS on your routers based on the tags rather than port numbers ... but that's about it.

    - Roach

    1. Re:Quoted portion leaves out important bit by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > So ... it really doesn't do much.

      It gives the MSCEs another reason to ban Linux because they won't be able to "push out policies" to Linux boxes.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    2. Re:Quoted portion leaves out important bit by BrianRoach · · Score: 4, Informative


      And now that I've actually had some coffee ... this is just silly.

      They're breaking rule #1: Never trust the client.

      If your QoS network equipment is using these tags instead of actual port numbers, well, it's pretty easy to reconfigure how a client tags its packets.

      - Roach

    3. Re:Quoted portion leaves out important bit by multimediavt · · Score: 1

      I wish your post could get moved, not modded, up to the top of the comments list. This little tidbit would save a lot of ignorant comments.

    4. Re:Quoted portion leaves out important bit by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      QoS based on port numbers a) does not work for all protocols, especially those which do not use fixed ports and b) does not work in all situations, because you can listen on nonstandard ports. The only way you can accurately do QoS without help from a trusted client is to snoop the packets and determine their type that way - which of course won't work for many types of encrypted traffic.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Quoted portion leaves out important bit by leuk_he · · Score: 1

      QoS ms style does require authorization form the clients. All clients that do not get authorized correct go automatically in the lowest class. so in order to get VOIP working you need a chain of authorized network equipment.

      Port is only limited. More and more applications use random ports now adays.

  19. So which parts... by Eggplant62 · · Score: 1

    ...of iptables or netfilter did they steal from Linux to make up their new traffic-shaping capabilities that has been in Linux and other *nix variants for years?

    Woot, MS just got a bit more professional in their offering. How nice.

    1. Re:So which parts... by evandrofisico · · Score: 1

      They steal from openBSD trafic shaping (inside PF) so that they will not be sued. That's the BSD, which Microsoft and Apple love so much...

  20. This is a stupid idea by mwilliamson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bandwidth management _must_ not rely on the host's cooperation. All will work beautifully until a virus totally rapes the network because QoS responsibility had been shifted from the network to the hosts. Damn, this isn't just stupid, it's freaking pathetic. What next Microsoft, pull in layer 2 into your stack as well?

    1. Re:This is a stupid idea by in10d · · Score: 1

      > Bandwidth management _must_ not rely on the host's cooperation.

      I agree 100%, but that's how TOS/diffserv was designed many years ago.
      Microsoft is just trying to keep up...

    2. Re:This is a stupid idea by Sancho · · Score: 1

      This technology existed BEFORE Microsoft implemented it. As is often the case, they are late in the game, but if you're going to blast Microsoft for it, you're going to have to blast Linux, and BSD, too.

      Anyway, this is more about prioritizing the host's traffic, not preventing the host from taking up too much network bandwidth. I do this with Linux, right now (prioritizing ssh and http). You obviously still want networking equipment that can slow down a host which is acting too aggressively.

  21. Re:There MS goes again. re-inventing the wheel... by Toby+The+Economist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    QoS requires support from your network hardware.

    The Internet doesn't have that.

    Note also QoS doesn't actually solve all problems. For example, if you have two network applications running, and you want one of them to have priority such that it can take bandwidth from the other when it needs it - well, you're out of luck. QoS doesn't handle that situation.

  22. Real SysAdmins... by philipmather · · Score: 0

    ...throttle users not traffic.

    --
    Regards, Phil
    1. Re:Real SysAdmins... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Soviet Russia, users throttle you!

  23. Marching forward by t00le · · Score: 1

    We really should not view any improvement in the Borg IP stack as a bad thing. They have already assimilated the world, the least they could do is provide a quasi-robust core set of features w/ some improvement in stability.

    There are large amounts of small companies that probably do not have campus grade layer 2/3 devices that can accomodate QoS or traffic shaping, so adding the functionality at an end-point is honestly a good idea. However I will be the first to admit that it is a little late in the game, but they can now check another box from the list when comparing their product to other offerings.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
    1. Re:Marching forward by BrianRoach · · Score: 1

      There are large amounts of small companies that probably do not have campus grade layer 2/3 devices that can accomodate QoS or traffic shaping, so adding the functionality at an end-point is honestly a good idea.

      You are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, if you read the article, Vista doesn't provide this. All it does is allow tagging of packets with values that QoS enabled network equipment can use.

      FTA: "Vista's ability to use centrally configured group-policies to push out policies to specific users or servers, and allows tagging of packets with the Diffserv code point values, so that our network infrastructure can see the marking and react to it in different ways - whether it's VoIP traffic, or TCP/IP business critical traffic, or web-surfing traffic. (Granted, this QoS doesn't guarantee anything, it just marks the packet in Windows and it is up to your network infrastructure to honor those tags.)"

      - Roach

  24. For anyone interested in enabling Compound TCP by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Compound TCP talked about in TFA is disabled in Vista by default. If you want to turn it on, you can open a console with admin privs (right click Command Prompt -> Run as Administrator) and enter:

    netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp

    This was one of the first commands I ran after Vista installed, and the difference is noticable.

    1. Re:For anyone interested in enabling Compound TCP by Slashcrap · · Score: 2, Funny

      netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp

      This was one of the first commands I ran after Vista installed, and the difference is noticable.


      You could be a little bit more specific about what "noticeable" means. Was it good or bad?

      I recently tried to reduce the MTU size on a server 6000 miles away via the following command :

      ifconfig eth0 mtu 1200

      But I forgot to type the "mtu" part.

      The difference was definitely noticeable. No, not in a good way.

    2. Re:For anyone interested in enabling Compound TCP by jrutley · · Score: 1

      Why oh why would anyone want a backward OS that requires console commands?

    3. Re:For anyone interested in enabling Compound TCP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And people (still) say linux is hard to use.

  25. And don't forget the network as a whole. by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The network has different characteristics depending upon what point you are at on it.

    The WAN routers see the low bandwidth, higher latency serial links and such.

    The servers/workstations see the high bandwidth, low latency ethernet links.

    Do you really want your server(s) calculating its(their) window(s) based upon whether the request is originating across the WAN or next to it on the LAN?

    This sounds like a good idea when you're talking about a single workstation, at home, connected to a cable connection or xDSL or whatever. But it sounds like soooooo many problems in the corporate environment.

    Right now it is easy to find the server/workstation that is flooding the network. It's going to be very difficult when you have hundreds(thousands?) of machines that are ALL trying to maximize their bandwidth usage.

    Personally, I'd prefer the ability to set the LAN parameters for the machines ... and then put a shaping router on the WAN links.

    1. Re:And don't forget the network as a whole. by cornjones · · Score: 2, Interesting

      the value in this will be that you can push it through group policy and mass configure workstations. It will be just another policy that will help keep your workstations from running away and flooding your network.

    2. Re:And don't forget the network as a whole. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Right now it is easy to find the server/workstation that is flooding the network. It's going to be very difficult when you have hundreds(thousands?) of >machines that are ALL trying to maximize their bandwidth usage.

      But when the PC that's flooding the network does rate-limiting it isn't flooding anymore, is it? Sorry but I think your post doesn't make much sense also for the other things you say.

      The question is does a corporation really need this functionality on clients, when servers (running linux for example ;-) could do the rate-limiting much better at gateway level.

    3. Re:And don't forget the network as a whole. by MeNeXT · · Score: 1

      A managed switch will handle the LAN a router will handle the WAN. When I have hundreds, of machines I prefer a managed switch. I like to see what is happening on the whole network not just what hits the server.

      --
      DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
  26. reasons to get vista. by CDPatten · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new, nothing worth upgrading for, etc. Well, it seems to me it does. I think anyone who is intellectually honest would agree... I might be on the wrong site?

    This article points out 1 cool thing, a new networking stack, but it isn't the only thing. And actually he doesn't even talk about IPv6. For example, my lab at home I has 3 Vista installs, and the communicate out of the box over IPv6. In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol.

    -I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon.

    -I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.

    -For Remote Access: PNRP. Again, really cool... do a search if you don't know what it is.

    -Even the average business user will benefit from little things like the snippet tool (prety cool by the way, it's in the accessories folder if you haven't tried it yet).

    -I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool.
    These are just random features that popped into my head, but it seems that Vista has LOTS of things other than Aero to encourage upgrading on all fronts (Security, tools, toys, looks, games, etc.).

    Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!

    MS may not have invented the notion of every new feature in Vista, but it's a good product, and way better than XP. A worthy upgrade. It's not one feature that makes it a good product, but the cumulative of many features. I think you anti-ms people lose a lot of credibility when you blindly bash MS and say Vista sucks and it offers no reasons to upgrade for anyone. For all users it has some pretty enticing plusses.

    1. Re:reasons to get vista. by nitio · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry. I don't talk corporate bullshit. (CAD Online, 2005)

      --
      http://stoploudness.org/
    2. Re:reasons to get vista. by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart
      > attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc.

      And the other half says "Unix has had this for decades".

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    3. Re:reasons to get vista. by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 2, Funny

      No intellectually honest person is saying Vista + new Office offer nothing new. The problem is that... well... you're reading this on Slashdot.

    4. Re:reasons to get vista. by Slashcrap · · Score: 1

      -I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool.

      Scrape the bottom of the barrel much?

    5. Re:reasons to get vista. by igb · · Score: 1
      In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol.
      And for those of us who don't know the benefits, even though we've been told every year for the past five that ``next year will be IPv6!'', what are they?

      ian

    6. Re:reasons to get vista. by oliverthered · · Score: 1

      In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS,

      that should be, IPv6 would already be main-stream if it wasn't for MS.

      I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.
      Why, XP and even windows 95 have colour correction support if you set your pc up properly.

      apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack
      I think apple are atleast as bad as Microsoft.

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    7. Re:reasons to get vista. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades! You also have to remember that OSX is built from a BSD Core thus is basically a *nix. This was the pure genious of Jobs, to drop legacy / classic mac and build something new and improved. M$ has had many chancies to do the same say between 95 & 98 -- 98 to 2k, but no they chose to support legacy all the way, oh and lets not even start on the security rant.

      IPV6 is nothing new in the IT ring, and to say because M$ has it its gunna be main stream is just insane.

    8. Re:reasons to get vista. by Random+Destruction · · Score: 2, Insightful
      -I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.

      What in the hell are you talking about?
      --
      :x
    9. Re:reasons to get vista. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So if I don't agree with you, I am intellectually dishonest? HAA!

      This article is an advertisement for the new TCP/IP stack. NEW may mean something in hardware, but for software, especially for COMPLEX software like a stack, "new" translates to "unproven" which can subjectively translate to "could be really bad, dude."

      The comment on virtual desktops: The WindowsXP version I tested sucked (yes, that word again). The unix/linux versions are better, but not as good as some 3rd party ones available now (space or spaces for Mac, I use DesksAtWill for windows). Can't comment on the OSX version since it is not released, but by reputation, one can expect the OSX version to be "usuable."

      You are certainly on the wrong site, since you want to talk marketing rather than engineering excellence. Even your OSX comment seems to be manipulative than honest.

    10. Re:reasons to get vista. by strikethree · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!

      It seems that you must be a shill since even a fanboi would not make such an outrageous claim. MS Windows has _never_ had multiple desktops. They released a crappy powertoy for XP that supposedly emulates multiple desktops but the apps never play along nicely since MS Windows was _never_ designed with multiple desktops in mind.

      strike

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    11. Re:reasons to get vista. by Idaho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new.

      Yes, and it looks like you've just proven this point yourself. Thanks for pointing it out yourself, here goes:


      IPv6.

      Has been available in every other OS I know of for years. Microsoft is finally catching up here.


      -I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon.

      Whatever. I think it's a privacy-sensitive thing that I'd want to disable ASAP, but ok. So, you can set an arbitrary picture as your login icon. Stop the presses! Groundbreaking developments!


      -I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool.

      See above, only even more so.


      -I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.


      So again, if what you say is true, Microsoft is finally catching up to other OS's here once again. Btw. in fact I don't agree with you, I have used the same 19" CRT on a Mac Mini and a Windows/Linux machine, and the pictures look exactly the same (you just have to calibrate the screen right).


      Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!


      !? Since when has Windows had multiple desktop built into the OS (without installing 3rd party applications, specific video card drivers or funny power tools that nobody ever bothers with - not least because many applications tend to act in very strange ways when you try to use it)? Also, if Vista finally supports this, Microsoft is, once more (how often do you want to point this out?) finally catching up with what has been taken for granted in every other major OS for ages.

      So far, my reaction to Vista (and yes, I tried to run RC2 on my AMD64 3500+ with 1GB RAM) is that it's completely underwhelming. The only thing that is overwhelming about it are the memory requirements - it managed to use 600+ MB right from booting it up!

      By the way, you also forgot to mention a few more "features", such as the fantastic customer-friendly Digital Restriction Management schemes, activation schemes that might disable your computer, etc. etc. just to name a few.
      --
      Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
    12. Re:reasons to get vista. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No intellectually honest person is saying Vista + new Office offer nothing new. The problem is that... well... you're reading this on Slashdot. Speaking as an intellectually honest AC, I can say with all honesty and force of intellect that Vista (and who the hell would use Office anyway?) offers nothing new _for_me_. I've been using GNU/linux for a couple of months now (I switched when I started to seriously consider the virtues and vices of Vista) and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't have the 'uberDesktop' stuff (AIGLX,XGL,Compiz,Beryl,etc.) and I don't do a lot of fancy things with it.

      It outperforms XP in every way I use it aside from Gaming. If the only downside of a product is due to the anti-competitive posture of other market forces and I don't consider that downside mission critical I'll gladly not feed the gaming industry for their lack of support on whatever platform I choose.

      So, sure there's some newness to Vista. That's not the debated point. The debated point are either: a. the new features would not play any major role in my use of the computer; b. the implementation details; or c. the cost. In my case A and C are the big factors while B is only a minor factor (I used Windows for over ten years, it was good enough of an implementation).
    13. Re:reasons to get vista. by crabpeople · · Score: 1
      Man I really shouldnt be responding to people who call multiple home pc's a "LAB" but here we are.

      "In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol."

      Rofl.. yes we all know the benefits! But you know what? I am an idiot. Can you please list one benefit that isn't solved by natting?

      "-I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon."

      When im browsing the network of COMPUTERS I would rather see data reflecting the COMPUTER. Who the hell cares about the people (even if they do exsist - most servers don't have anyone sitting behind them). Id rather if they had different icons for something useful like servers and workstations.

      "I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista."

      How the heck could a picture look different on a different.. ah wait I know! Right click on the desktop and go to properties. Find the settings tab and go to SCREEN RESOLUTION. Simply turn the screen resolution up, and your pictures will look better!

      If you cant even set the screen resolution properly, I dont think I am going to read anymore. Clearly your knowledge about operating systems completely owns mine.

      --
      I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
    14. Re:reasons to get vista. by Sancho · · Score: 1

      Aside from the larger address space (no need to NAT anymore), IPV6 has host autoconfiguration built-in. DHCP can still be used, if advanced features are necessary. Multicast is built-in (so as long as your network supports IPV6, you can have it).

      In general, IPV6 should prove easier to manage. The routing is simpler, and it's easier to implement security in some cases.

      That said, the end-user has never been the stopping block for adoption. The entire network infrastructure has to support IPV6, and right now it doesn't. Just because Microsoft will have lots of "ipv6-on-by-default" users in two years doesn't mean the rest of the industry has any incentive to upgrade their equipment.

    15. Re:reasons to get vista. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FYI: Every time you type in a password you're using a different desktop.

      NT has supported different different desktop sessions since I can remember. Crap-tastically written apps don't negate that.

    16. Re:reasons to get vista. by Sancho · · Score: 1


              Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new.

      Yes, and it looks like you've just proven this point yourself. Thanks for pointing it out yourself, here goes:


      "New" is relative. All of the "catch-up" features you laughed at are new to Microsoft (though ipv6 was available in XP, just not on by default). Since the point is whether or not it's worth the upgrade from 2k/XP to Vista, whether they're new to Linux isn't an issue--whether they're new to Windows is.

    17. Re:reasons to get vista. by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new, nothing worth upgrading for, etc. Well, it seems to me it does. I think anyone who is intellectually honest would agree.

      Well, I'm intellectually honest, and I can honestly (and intellectually ;-) tell you that FOR ME, there is no interesting technology in Vista as a home user. None whatsoever. But, thanks for the generality -- it is nice to be able to say right up front that you can't believe anyone would disagree with you.

      In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol.

      People have been saying that since about '96 as I recall. So being the next one to predict it's imminent success isn't really buying you much.

      I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon.

      I'm glad you are impressed by that. To me, it's just pointless eye-candy. And probably needs another half a gig of RAM to allow the fscking bloated OS to run.

      Even the average business user will benefit from little things like the snippet tool (prety cool by the way, it's in the accessories folder if you haven't tried it yet).

      We've had beta versions of Vista in our shop for some development testing. Quite frankly, I and everyone I work with have been completely underwhelmed by the GUI. Downright annoyed by it in cases. I have found it to be dog slow, ugly as sin, and in some cases appears to violate any pre-existing conventions about making a GUI useable.

      I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now

      Wow! I'm completely astounded that this clock thingy is going to be considered revolutionary and justify the cost of the upgrade. But, hey, whatever flots their collective boats.

      MS may not have invented the notion of every new feature in Vista, but it's a good product, and way better than XP. A worthy upgrade. It's not one feature that makes it a good product, but the cumulative of many features. I think you anti-ms people lose a lot of credibility when you blindly bash MS and say Vista sucks and it offers no reasons to upgrade for anyone.

      Conversely, there are always people who will claim that what MS just rolled out the door is the greatest thing since walking upright and breathing oxygen. Those people lose just as much credibility by automatically defending it just as blindly. It's a two-way street.

      I say that they've just overall shaved off some of the suck, and added a few minor features which (admittedly) might make the overall experience that much better. And, we're not saying it offers no reasons to upgrade for anyone, we're just pointing out that the features we're being told about, aren't compelling reasons for us to consider upgrading. I haven't seen one thing (including anything you've listed) that I've ever though "boy, I wish it could do that", or that I'm now saying "my God, how have I lived without that"?

      For all users it has some pretty enticing plusses.

      No, for some users it has some enticing stuff in it. For other people (ie, some subset of all) there is nothing enticing or compelling about this stuff. Therefore, for some users, there are some features wich offer value.

      For me (and probably a bunch of other people), improved eye-candy isn't a compelling reason to switch. They may be for you, and that's fine. But, intellectual honesty doesn't actually compell me to agree with you -- and invoking it makes me strongly disagree with you. (Equally, I believe you can be intellectually honest and totally disagree with me. ;-)

      Having said that, enjoy your shin

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    18. Re:reasons to get vista. by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1
      Has been available in every other OS I know of for years. Microsoft is finally catching up here.


      XP already has IPv6.
    19. Re:reasons to get vista. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      -I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.

      Well, first of all, that only took 10 years! Secondly, now import it into any Microsoft application and print it... ahhh! my eyes! my eyes! Color graphics handling of any kind has never been Microsoft's strong point, third party vendors have done that.

      Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!

      WTF are you talking about? Windows does not have native support for multiple desktops. If and when it ever does, I suspect it will behave as badly as XP's support for multiple monitors, shifting focus to any old monitor it chooses, popping up error/warning windows on the wrong monitor, etc, etc.

      Back to work, Microsoftie! Fix them bugs! (Talk about job security!)

    20. Re:reasons to get vista. by Kjella · · Score: 1

      -I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool.

      See above, only even more so.


      But have they fixed the stupidest bug of them all? Namely, if you're a non-admin user can you see the damn calendar in read-only mode? Yes, you could pull up Outlook or whatever, but I always hated that...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  27. Netlimiter by _KiTA_ · · Score: 1

    No, but you can do that in XP and (presumably) Vista using the excellent Netlimiter program.

    http://www.netlimiter.com/

    Back when I worked at an ISP with a shared bandwidth broadband solution, we would politely suggest that to the college jackasses downloading Bittorrent without setting it up to be network friendly (like we asked/demanded/etc). It really does work quite well.

    1. Re:Netlimiter by palad1 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the tip. Anything similar for OSX?

    2. Re:Netlimiter by jZnat · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can use its firewall, ipfw(8), to do QoS packet shaping (which is essentially what you're asking for). Some details are available on the MacShadows KB.

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
    3. Re:Netlimiter by Kjella · · Score: 1

      And my question is - is there something similar for Linux?

      I need something similar to choke the *sum* of my downloads so that the line I'm sharing with the landlord doesn't get swamped. I know I can set it up in some applications and that's usually better if all are using the same software, but I've not found any good tool on Linux which resembles Netlimiter, only a few patheticly difficult packages which in the end couldn't limit incoming bandwidth (you have to use TCP congestion controls to do it), and one that could but required kernel patching and so on.

      So if I'm doing a torrent and a newsgroup download and a http download and want them to use max 2Mbit download together - how would I go about that on a Debian Etch setup? In Netlimiter this is trivially easy - on the totals, I set up the limit, done. To me this has been a showstopper from using Linux, and one I'd really like to solve.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  28. Malware by simm1701 · · Score: 1

    So windows now has as part of the default configuration a tool that allows you to control the performace of different networking applications....

    How long until malware takes advantage of this to slow down your connection (litterally) until you pay for their new "tool" to fix your system....

    I hope vista security on this feature is well designed, otherwise this is an easy target for malware to trick more naive users into parting with their cash.

    Though to be fair, with this feature and others in vista MS is actually approaching having a real OS - rather than just a GUI + disk manager... I wonder which BSD licensed code they used....

    --
    $_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
    1. Re:Malware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm curious too; I would tend to think OpenBSD...

    2. Re:Malware by dosquatch · · Score: 1

      I am replying to remove moderation. I fumble-fingered this into an off-topic, which it is not. There is no undo. I reuqested the moderation be removed, but it looks like that's not going to happen. I sincerely apologize for this. I don't want to be responsible for the ding to simm's karma.

      --
      "Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
    3. Re:Malware by simm1701 · · Score: 1

      well the mod seems to have been removed - thanks!!

      --
      $_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
  29. L7-Filter makes it easy, as parent says by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 1

    I've been using L7-Filter, on my Linksys router of all things, for a couple years now and it performs very nicely. Can have gnutella/G2/ED2K/BitTorrent transfers happening and still get 20ms pings in Counter-Strike with a game as smooth as it would be without any of the P2P stuff going on. It is absolutely great.

  30. Re:There MS goes again. re-inventing the wheel... by octaene · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a big deal because now, viruses and malware can slow your network access automagically, so that it'll take weeks for you to download those security patches and antivirus signatures that you should've already downloaded. :-)

  31. They have thought of everything! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder if it will have a checkbox to allow you to throttle the traffic of the next zero day worm.

  32. Problem Solver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another great reason to reboot your workstation with a Knoppix DVD. Problem solved.

  33. Wow a lot of ms bashers that are hypocrites by majortom1981 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    All of you are saying that linux has this and ahrdware does this. What they dont get bashed but microsoft adds the feature and you right away bash them. Doesnt linux have it too? I dont see why people dont bash linux either. What people dont want a microsoft os to get better? why all the hypocritical bashing?

    1. Re:Wow a lot of ms bashers that are hypocrites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, we are complaning because they are trying to pass this off as some new innovation when in fact they are just copying what has been done for years. The headline should read "Windows, now more like linux!".

  34. Next Generation? by brunes69 · · Score: 1

    Is it just me or is this article describing abilities Linux + IPTables has had for years upon years?

    Hell my Linksys WRT54G with modded firmware at home does application-based traffic shaping (no way I would be able to use Vonage reliably while downloading huge ISOS if it didn't).

    How is this next generation?

    1. Re:Next Generation? by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      It's the next generation compared to Microsoft's current generation which is last generation. Got it?

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  35. specific implementation .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

    "I think you're confused here. This is just a specific implementation of TCP/IP, not a different protocol or anything"

    Then please go ahead and enlighten me. What does Vista TCP/IP do that requires a specific implementation

    was Re:IPV6 ..

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
    1. Re:specific implementation .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      I'm not entirely sure, it all looks very much like algorithmic tweaks and stuff. I'm aware at least of Compound TCP, which supposedly has large benefits in some scenarios.

      Reading the article itself might be an idea here, though, since it is an article on the new features.

    2. Re:specific implementation .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

      According to the article 'the Vista stack has been redesigned from the ground up so it can't be specific implimentation. Why didn't they put these new features in the published RFC for IPv6. I've listed what I could see of what's new in Vista TCP/IP. Is such functionality not in IPV6.

      "Receive Window Auto-Tuning and Compound TCP"

      "mark the ECN field so that if the network is congested"

      "QoS into account"

      "tagging of packets with the Diffserv code point values"

      "throttle the bandwidth of a particular subnet to a particular server"

      --
      davecb5620@gmail.com
    3. Re:specific implementation .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      I think you're still a bit confused here. IP is a protocol. It just specifies how the computers are to talk to one another. The article is about how MS's new stack implements that protocol. Because the protocol (intentionally) doesn't specify how one is to do these things (just the bounds that it has to fit within to be "correct"), there's a lot of slack in the actual way that things are implemented.

      All of the features you list there are basically just ways to "tune" the way that the implementation works so that it works as well as possible.

    4. Re:specific implementation .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

      "I think you're still a bit confused here. IP is a protocol"

      Can non Vista computers impliment the full functionality of Vista TCP/IP. Can they do so without a license.

      --
      davecb5620@gmail.com
    5. Re:specific implementation .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      They can certainly communicate with Vista happily, with no problems whatsoever (one of the requirements of Compound TCP is that it doesn't break the TCP standard, unlike some other ways of getting past this problem). If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish.

    6. Re:specific implementation .. by malakai · · Score: 1
      Zootm: you have far too much patience. This discussion was over when rs232 asked
      What does Vista TCP/IP do that requires a specific implementation

      After all, every TCP/IP stack is a specific implementation.

      RS232: stick with simple physical layer. Leave the Transport layer to us....
    7. Re:specific implementation .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      Thanks for that. I was beginning to think that I had some kind of mental hole for whatever he/she was asking; I just have no idea. Of course anyone can implement this - they already have!

  36. What a surprise... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ... another 'Microsoft is wonderful' posting, coincident with a major product release.

    Microsoft astroturf in action.

  37. YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ahh, more Microsoft bashing.
     
    To paraphrase a quote on bash.org, one day I'm going to invent a device to stab people in the face over the Internet and get very rich. Oh, and you'll be my first target.

    1. Re:YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That will only work if your potential victim is using Microsoft Windows. Otherwise it won't work. The device requires a zero-day vulnerability, which Linux/*BSD/Mac OSX doesn't have.

  38. You Forgot TCP Window Scaling by eklitzke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The bandwidth throttling may not be a big deal to you, but on high bandwidth high latency links you can get huge performance improvements (i.e. 10-100x) with proper use of TCP window scaling. In the original TCP spec the window size could be no more than 64 KB, but this behavior was later amended and a TCP option was added to allow you to increase this value.

    The optimal window size is (Round Trip Time)*(Bandwidth). For my internet connection (600 KBps) that means that a 64KB window is only adequate for sites whose ping time is no greater than 110 ms. For sites with a higher latency, the amount of bandwidth I can get in a TCP connection between me and this host is artificially limited by my TCP window size.

    Right now it generally isn't possible to get a reliable connection after increasing the window size past 64 KB because some older/cheapo routers will not work with TCP windows greater than 64K. But if this gets into Vista and TCP window scaling options started getting heavy use, there would be a lot of pressure on sites with broken routers to get them fixed, and then those of us with high bandwidth connections would reap the benefits.

    --
    #include ".signature"
  39. Two subnets in Windows Home on the same interface? by rnd0110 · · Score: 1

    Interesting. I have tried to setup two subnets on the same physical interface (WLAN) in Windows XP Home... (wanted to have localnetwork + internet): no way - only one network at a time! A friend of mine (network professional) told me that its possible but very hard to do. Is this going to be solved in Windows Vista? So, what is this talk really about? Why Windows users even need to know about subnets let alone shaping traffic?

  40. New Stack old bugs by hauntingthunder · · Score: 1

    Well

    On this week in tech someone commented that this new stack had a lot of identical bugs bugs that had been fixed years ago in the older stacks.

    --
    You will never get to heaven with an Ak 47... But A Zu 30 is good for Low Flying Cherubim
  41. "cool" gimmicks != productive by walterbyrd · · Score: 1

    If you consider those gimmicks "cool" then good for you. But I don't see any bottom line productivity gain.

    1. Re:"cool" gimmicks != productive by SEMW · · Score: 1

      You're right; it's all cool gimmics. Especially the new networking stack TFA's about. And the new sound stack too; that'll be hours of fun. XPS is a laugh, and the completely new user-mode driver model is hilarious. The Dynamic System Address Space is way cool, as is Transactional NTFS. And don't get me started on the Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, are Cardspace! Many happy days to be wiled away...

      --
      What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
  42. Halloween Document advice in action... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Looking through the first Halloween document over at http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween1.html #_Toc427495768 I noticed this familiar tactic.

    (quoted from the document)

    "Blunting OSS attacks

    Generally, Microsoft wins by attacking the core weaknesses of OSS projects.

    De-commoditize protocols & applications

    OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

    No thanks Microsoft, I'll stick with standard protocols.

  43. What do you mean, "next-gen"!? by Idaho · · Score: 4, Insightful
    For example, you can throttle the bandwidth of a particular subnet to a particular server, giving some departments more access to the servers that they need. You can even restrict outgoing bandwidth for certain peer-to-peer applications like bit torrent. This shaping can also be handy when applied to servers, allowing less bandwidth for certain users/departments, and more for others.


    Why is this called "next-gen"? There is nothing "next-gen" about this. If anything, Microsoft is finally catching up with the rest of the world in this department.

    Such stuff was possible with Linux (and, I'm sure, BSD) servers for years. I know for sure because I used to have such a setup (to do traffic shaping on our -then- relatively slow internet connection shared by too many people) on a Linux server, more than 5 years ago!

    Please stop this silly use of marketingspeak of calling something "next-gen" when in fact the company under consideration is just finally catching up with what the rest of the world has been doing for ages.
    --
    Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
  44. -1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be +5) by xtracto · · Score: 0, Troll

    "easier to use" means "requires less knowledge", then Linux might not be "easier to use". But if "easier to use" means "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", then Linux is much "easier to use".

    Just read at what you just wrote, "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", WTF is a "knowedgable person"? one that knows how to use the system? if that is, then both systems are "easier to use" to the people that already know how to use it DOH!!

    On the other side, just to backup what the other poster said, and as a proof of the "easiesterst" of use of Linux, see the difference in "easiability of use" between Linux (Ubunut 6.10) and Windows (XP SP2) when wanting to connect a PSX Dance Mat using a PSX 2 Parallel port adapter [I *tried* to do this some weeks ago and gave up and installed it in my girlfriends Windows XP machine):

    Windows XP:
    - Download PSXPAD program
    - Run program
    - Click NEXT button until it changes to "Finish" button
    - Click Finish button.
    - Go into the Control Panel/Joysticks/PSXPAD/Properties window and select the option to treat axis as buttons

    Ubuntu Linux[via http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/psx_adaptor/ps x_adaptor_en.php>googled web page]:
    - Open console (woah! 80% of the users would have installed Windows by then)
    If the gamecon driver is compliled in your kernel (head explodes):
        # modprobe gamecon gc=0,7,0,0,0,0 [ Note that, after several head explosions and hours of google search you realize that you should write 8 instead of 7 to enable "dance mat" compatilibity there]

    If you have a rescent kernel, try this instead:
    # modprobe gamecon map=0,7,0,0,0,0

    If the module does not exist, you will have to compile it yourself. When you configure your kernel, select the ... [Yeah, good luck downloading ./config ./make ./make install, by now my girlfriend was asking me when were we going to play the darn thing ]

    Then of course you connect the dance mat [wireless] and it does not work, it just sits there, i tried mod probing enabling disabling and what not without sucess.

    In summary, I use Linux for everything [I use Fedora Core at work, and Ubuntu at home and ssh -Y quite often to a RHEL server) but for the love of god leave those blatant lies to comp.linux.advocacy fanbois

    --
    Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
  45. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by xtracto · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    And just to emphasize my point, we are not talking about an obscure hyper closed source driver here, it is a driver that is already *supported* in the kernel. WHY the FUCK is it SOOOOOO cumbersome to connect and use a dance mat in Linux while in Windows XP [which does NOT support the hardware and you have to download a THIRD PARTY DRIVER] is as easy as [lots of things] double click, next next next, finish.

    Soo? any comments? Linux zealots please display your fury ahaha.

    p.s. As I said I work and develop software [Mainly Java but I do some C++/wxWidgets/OpenGL code which I always try to make 100%] portable in Linux. My everyday platform is Linux, I recently bought Lemmings Revolution game and plan to spend a weekend making it work with wine, but for the love of god, IT IS NOT AS EASY TO USE AS WINDOWS.

    --
    Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
  46. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by cortana · · Score: 1

    Why doesn't the uevent consumer (e.g., hotplug or udev) load the appropriate kernel module automatically when the dance mat is plugged in?

  47. DirectX 10? by Yvan256 · · Score: 1
    Of course, I'm getting it for DirectX 10 games, but that's just me.
    Thank you, Zonk, for helping Microsoft to consolidate their grip on the gaming market with their proprietary technologies.
  48. Horrible title. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    I think the main reason for the negative reaction is the title:

    Vista's 'Next Gen' TCP/IP Stack

    If MS really was claiming it was 'Next Gen', we'd have a problem. Of course, they haven't, because everyone else has been supporting this for ages. So, as usual, MS is the last to implement it, while somehow pretending they invented it.

    Only this time, it wasn't MS pretending that, it was whatever moron thought up the Slashdot title.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  49. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by jedidiah · · Score: 1, Informative

    Lack of interest.

    Someone interested in SELLING you a dancemat has done the work for you in the WinDOS environment.

    Networking, OTOH, is not that sort of thing. It's been well supported in Linux before there was any TCP/IP libraries even included in Windows.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  50. Wow, this could be good... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    Not for Vista, but for net neutrality.

    Think about it: You no longer need special software, you no longer need to mess with your router, you just get a "Vista-ready" router, or an ISP that cooperates, and you have the QoS built in to the OS, probably in an easy enough way that there's no longer a question of your ISP having to enforce some draconian policy over your own Internet usage.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  51. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by profplump · · Score: 1

    Just read at what you just wrote, "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", WTF is a "knowedgable person"? one that knows how to use the system? if that is, then both systems are "easier to use" to the people that already know how to use it DOH!!

    If you actually read what he said instead of just making fun of it, you'll see that he was discussing how "easier to use" was not necessarily limited to your notion of "requires less training". His point was not that linux requires less training, or that someone with know prior knowledge would be able to run linux more easily than windows. What he said was that "behaves consistently" might be a more important part of "easier to use" than "requires less training" for someone who already has knowledge of the system.

    You also whine about having to google to find the proper command to enable the driver for your mat. It's a little unfair to ignore the time you spent googling to find PSXPAD. Or to pretend that copying and pasting a search result to run a single command from a prompt is more difficult than downloading and installing a program. They are different tasks, but I have trouble believe that search->copy->terminal->paste is "harder" than search->download->execute->follow prompts.

  52. So is this "innovation"? by draevil · · Score: 1

    As far as a feature goes, it's really a complete non-story. Aside from the inefficiency of shaping traffic on every client computer as opposed to the router, it's also the sort of thing that you can do with ease on linux.

    For a home router I recommend taking a look at the Fairnat script http://www.metamorpher.de/fairnat/ although it doesn't include rules for firewalling - you have to do that yourself.

    To take full advantage of traffic shaping a connection on linux for users who use p2p it's a good idea to get a version of iptables (or compile your own) with the ipp2p module. It can match against pretty much all p2p protocols that people use (bittorrent, edonkey, soulseek etc).

    That'll allow you to prioritise your interactive traffic (ssh, IRC, instant messengers), let your mid-priority traffic (HTTP, IMAP, POP) come in and then put your bulk transfers and p2p lower down in terms of priority.

    If you've just got the one machine connected to a broadband modem then take a look at the wondershaper http://lartc.org/wondershaper/ script which will shape traffic on your machine.

  53. You don't get it by weedenbc · · Score: 1
    This is a reason NOT to get Vists. Stop and go back and listen to the Security Now! episode linked above.

    Writing a new stack from the ground up is a VERY BAD IDEA from a security perspective. Why? Because you have no idea what weaknesses, exploits, buffer vulnerabilites, etc are written in your brand new stack. The stack in WinXP was really good for only one reason - Microsoft simply copied a UNIX stack that had been around for ages and had already had a ton of bugs fixed.

    Now, all that is scrapped and written from the start. Who knows how many mistakes that were already made and fixed in the past were re-made in Vista.

    --

    "Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
  54. Re:Two subnets in Windows Home on the same interfa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm using two network subnets on same ethernet segment without much trouble (except ICS and related DHCP problem...) in XP. Masquerading connection to DSL link (DSL modem is awful, freezes under heavy load when in NAT mode).

  55. Umm... Isn't this what routers already do? by Adeptus_Luminati · · Score: 1

    Isn't this what routers already can do for the past ohhh 7+ years? Why is Micro$oft spending time & resources in implementing something on a server that is actually the job of something at the network layer? Also "shaping entire subnets" is not doable from a server, the only thing that can traffic shape an entire subnet is the router that actually controls all packets going in and out of the subnet... a server at the edge can't control other IP device's traffic in the same subnet.

    Microsoft should first fix their internal OS issues before spreading their ambitions into #1) Areas they are not experts in #2) Areas that are much lower on the OSI layer.

    The function of an OS should be to provide stability & functionality to the applications that depend upon it. Trying to control all network traffic is going outside of that scope and I have doubts it can ever do a better job than a router.

    Ultimately I would like to see MS & Network vendors work together. MS can allow users to MARK (QoS) the packets for specific applications, but then let the routers do the bandwidth shaping. This to me makes a heck of a lot more sense.

    Adeptus.

    --
    No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
  56. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by TheJorge · · Score: 1
    You also whine about having to google to find the proper command to enable the driver for your mat. It's a little unfair to ignore the time you spent googling to find PSXPAD. Or to pretend that copying and pasting a search result to run a single command from a prompt is more difficult than downloading and installing a program. They are different tasks, but I have trouble believe that search->copy->terminal->paste is "harder" than search->download->execute->follow prompts.

    I don't have any experience with PSXPAD in particular, but in situations like this, I'm generally quite paranoid about downloading a random .exe and running it on my Windows machine to get some random functionality. Usually, it's only available as a compiled binary, and the site that hosts it is a template php site that could be put together in an hour. If one is to put in the due diligence to make sure such a file is legitimate and/or to repair their newly created WinZombie(R) when it's not, the difficulty of installing measured in effort and expertise required is much higher for the Windows machine.

  57. If you need it you already have it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chances are that any IT group that would manage to use this feature w/o f*cking up, already has tools in place to do it. As useless as one-way firewalls.

  58. Re:There MS goes again. re-inventing the wheel... by vadim_t · · Score: 1

    Well, that depends. You can set the ToS bits in the IP header. What actually happens depends on the router. If you have one application set to "Maximize bandwidth" while the other one is set to "normal service", AND the router looks at that and actually does what you asked for, you can get it to work that way.

    Or you can use a Linux box and set up traffic shaping, in which case you can divide bandwidth in any way you want. HTB makes what you say easy to do. Say: 20% for server A, 50% for server B, 30% for server C, servers A and B can use the full pipe if nothing else wants it, and C is always limited to 30%.

  59. simple... by smitty97 · · Score: 1

    ipfw pipe 1 config bw 300Kbit/s

    --
    mod me funny
  60. full functionality != can communicate .. by rs232 · · Score: 1
    I'm going to quote the question and response again so as we can compare them.

    "Can non Vista computers impliment the full functionality of Vista TCP/IP. Can they do so without a license", RS

    "They can certainly communicate with Vista happily, with no problems whatsoever (one of the requirements of Compound TCP is that it doesn't break the TCP standard, unlike some other ways of getting past this problem). If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish"

    Now come off it, you know specifically what was asked - can a non Vista OS provide full functionality without a license. Not whether it could communicate or if Compound TCP would break TCP/IP standard. Which features are not patent protected and does it make a difference to a developer if he can't impliment his own full version without violating some patent. Why patent a specification to TCP/IP at all.

    You call me confused yet when I ask you to give some details backing up your statements you respond with 'not entirely sure' and answer the question I didn't ask. Some earlier not answering the question samples ..

    Q. "Is such functionality not in IPV6", RS

    A. "I think you're still a bit confused here", zootm

    was Re:specific implementation ..
    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
    1. Re:full functionality != can communicate .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just an objective third-party here but.. rs232.. you just seem stupid as hell. you're out of your league man.. go back to the gamefaqs forum or whatever Internet rock you crawled out from under.

    2. Re:full functionality != can communicate .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      Your wording is consistently confusing to me. You're not asking proper questions. Define "full functionality" and I might be able to help you, otherwise I think I've answered as fully as I can. "Full functionality" seems to be "a TCP implementation". And obviously everyone already has that; without licence.

  61. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by indifferent+children · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow! If your best means of proving that Windows is easier to use than Linux, is some corner-case about a Dance Dance Lemmings gaming peripheral, then Linux is even closer to WorldDomination(tm) than I thought.

    --
    Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
  62. I think people are missing the picture here by dave562 · · Score: 1
    I've gone through the thread and read a lot of replies that are all redundent duplications of the theme, "Routers/Switches/my l337 *nix box" already does traffic shaping. Okay, acknowledged, you can configure a Catalyst switch or a Linux box to tag packets. Many people have pointed out that tagging the packets requires inspecting the packets, and that tagging packets based solely on port number isn't completely effective, especially on a port like 80 where you have lots of applications sending lots of different traffic over the same port.

    The way I see this working is that in your enterprise environment you come up with your default workstation image. The image contains various applications. ERP, CRM, web browser, IM client, mail client. You configure QoS tagging via group policy so that the ERP package gets 1st priority, CRM package gets 2nd, mail client 3rd, IM client 4th, web browser 5th (yes I know that you don't tag packets like that). The workstation connects to the switch, the switch recognizes the QoS tags without having to inspect the packets and traffic gets around the network better.

    What is there to bitch about here? QoS is the future that is here now. Everyone who cares about getting the most out of their network is looking for the best way to impliment QoS. The fact that Microsoft is letting administrators do it at the workstation, based on specific applications, controlled via an enterprise wide mechanism look Group Policy is a GREAT implimentation of QoS. Just because it isn't some ubah-l337 phresh no-day implimentation of QoS doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.

    It seems to me like the majority of people who have replied to this thread are looking at the world from their home PC. They don't see how QoS is going to help them get more out of their DSL line. You know what, it won't. As I've said in other posts, Microsoft doesn't really give two shits about your home machine. They are focused on helping enterprises make the most of their 1000+ workstation deployments. As a network administrator, I'd much rather that the workstation tell the network what applications it is running and tag those packets, instead of having to configure QoS policies based on subnets, VLANs, and other arbitrary delimiters.

  63. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by dfghjk · · Score: 1

    "Networking, OTOH, is not that sort of thing. It's been well supported in Linux before there was any TCP/IP libraries even included in Windows."

    Hmmm. Windows NT shipped (and existed for a year prior) at the same time as the very first Slackware distribution. Only the most hardcore would claim that Linux at that time supported anything "well". No one was rolling out their IT infrastructure using Linux at that time.

  64. Not much new; been there, done that, in the 1980s. by Animats · · Score: 1

    Well, what's here?

    Fooling around with TCP slow start and congestion window management. That's nothing new. We were arguing over that back in the 1980s. (I'm the inventor of the Nagle algorithm and fair queuing, and was the first to describe congestion collapse and the tragedy of the commons problem in networking. See my old RFCs.) Back then, we were more worried about causing transient network congestion; if you didn't have slow start, you could lose packets at the gateway from the LAN to the WAN because there wasn't enough memory in the router. And we were really worried about congestion in the middle of the network backbone. So the early versions of those algorithms were on the conservative side. Nobody worries about protecting the network in desktop clients any more, and the Internet now has more backbone capacity than edge capacity. Strategies in those areas have been more aggressive for years.

    Using the quality of service field. That's not new. The main issue is how to express priorities between the applications and the operating system. It's probably good enough to give video and audio higher quality of service. (Gamers who are trying to play streaming audio while fragging might complain about lag, so there will probably be some obscure registry key to mess with this.)

    Multithreading the network stack so it will use multiple CPUs. Reasonable enough, but not new. QNX has had that for years. Since its network stack runs in user space, put QNX on a multiprocessor and the network stack speeds up. Cisco uses QNX in their big routers. On the consumer desktop, it's not going to be noticed; your DSL line or cable modem is nowhere near fast enough to need this.

  65. and the crackers are dancing in the streets by mr_death · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Given Microsoft's usual poor code quality, we should all be cowering in fear. The IP stack is something that needs to be battle-tested for years before we get comfortable with it. Uncle Bill and his minions have chosen to inflict an unproven stack on us for the sake of a few bells and whistles.

    This is another fine reason to delay your Vista "upgrade" until at least the second service pack -- assuming you upgrade at all.

    I'm taking bets on how many critical patches will be on the ip stack this year (2007).

    --
    It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
    1. Re:and the crackers are dancing in the streets by cralewyth · · Score: 1

      May I comment on the shocking quality of the previous stack?

      Not meaning to be flamebait, but, I have always had issues with Windows and networking. Others might find it fine, but, well.... I've always been able to ping someone from a windows box. Oftentimes, sadly, this is the only thing I can do. Ping works, then I go to share a file, and they can't see me... or even better, they can see me, but all of a sudden "Permission denied", when I am running as admin user, and sharing in the standard way.

      I just hope that this newly re-written stack makes a difference in this field; Not that it will affect me within the next few years, but just for the sake of ones like me whom.... Windows networking is allergic to.

      --
      "Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
    2. Re:and the crackers are dancing in the streets by mr_death · · Score: 1

      The problems you describe (I've seen them too) are related to Windows file sharing -- incorrect or unobvious permissions on the shares. These _shouldn't_ be related to the IP stack, but with Microsoft's penchant for complexity, you never know ...

      --
      It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
  66. Re:There MS goes again. re-inventing the wheel... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You allow server admins to throttle their servers, you're allowing them to hose up the switches which in turn causes delays all around the network and then network has to join confrence calls when the server people are saying its a network problem when it's their own damn fault. no thanks

  67. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by snarfbot · · Score: 0

    well thats an obscure device, the thing is, you spend much less time maintaining linux, on my windows partition i have to reformat and reinstall every couple of months just to keep things working, simply because its easier than tracking down the problem. in linux the only time i have to actually do anything to make things work is when i install a newer version. installing binaries is incredibly easy. i have a whole directory full of updated packages that i keep in case i want to install a different version or what not, after a fresh install i just cd to the dir, type installpkg *.tgz, and presto everythings ready to go. ease of maintenance, takes about 30 minutes for the whole process, in windows the same thing would take god knows forever. switch to slack youll learn how to use linux, and you will never look back.

  68. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Just read at what you just wrote, "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", WTF is a "knowedgable person"? one that knows how to use the system? if that is, then both systems are "easier to use" to the people that already know how to use it DOH!!

    That's not true at all. Windows consistently behaves in a rather flaky manner for me. I have programs made by Microsoft that hang for no reason, give no indication of what's wrong, and there's nothing I can do except restart the program and hope that the problem doesn't occur too often.

    Once you get something working in Linux, it tends to *stay* working, not randomly flake out on you for no apparent reason. Yes, it might be harder to get things working initially in Linux, but you pay more in the long run in using Windows when you have to do all sorts of crap to work around the general flakiness.

  69. Microsoft innovates what Linux has done for years by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 1

    (see subject)

  70. M$ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cool, now ms can degrade network acceess to applications they don't favor, oh, say Itunes, for example. I'm sure they would never try to leverage some kind of control like this against their competition.

    Fortunately none of my clients is even remotely interested in upgrading to Vista, so this might not be an immediate problem. They use XP because they need to, and offering them a "new" product, that was considerably behind schedule (hence problematic), from the same company doesn't really appeal to them.

  71. Obligatory... by NerveGas · · Score: 1


        Usually, I hate this sort of comment, but I can't help it. Since decent OSs have had this sort of feature for at least a generation (or more, in some cases), shouldn't this be a "Three Generations Old" IP stack?

    steve

    --
    Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
  72. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    This would be like bringing up Windows 1.0 in a "who's gui came first discussion".

    Slackware's support for serious networking was actually very repectable in those days. I was a Slackware user then and even used ip masquerading to share a serial connection in those days.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  73. QoS based on ports is easy by SaberTaylor · · Score: 1

    Which will do for most apps.

    --
    If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
  74. Its easier to use seperate users. by Generic+Player · · Score: 1

    Instead of trying to get each app to use different IPs, when most will just use the IP on the same subnet as your default gateway, use users. Replace "firefox" with a shell script that does "sudo -u firefox_user firefox", and write your firewall rules for traffic shaping based on the users. This is also a good idea in general so that if you get hit with a malicious site exploiting firefox, it can't delete/change any of your data.

  75. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I can count all the people affected my that little "problem" on one finger.

    Guess which one.

  76. Traffic shaping... by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    So, vista now has traffic shaping...
    Linux has had this for years, as i`m sure have many other OS's, i've been using the linux traffic shaping facilities to deprioritise bittorrent traffic and prioritise voip traffic for quite some time.

    As for the stack having been rewritten from the ground up, it's amusing to see them make lots of the same mistakes that have been made in other tcp stacks when they were newly written too.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  77. Re:There MS goes again. re-inventing the wheel... by esmrg · · Score: 1

    ..that, AND
    your ISP can throttle those precious VOIP and bittorrent packets down to near zero (since the traffic is signed) in an effort to encourage use of their own telephone and video services.

  78. InJoy Firewall by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suppose this software package would also be worth having a look at. Supports OS/2, Linux, and Windows OS's.

    Administration
    Superior Protection
    Access Management
    Traffic Shaping
    IPSec VPN Support
    NAT Gateway

    http://www.fx.dk/firewall/shaping.html

  79. This was in Linux when? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bandwidth throttling over particular subnets, stateful packet inspection, the ability to inspect every part of a packet and filter/route based on however many rules you wish to apply to it.... has been in Linux since 1999... only 7 years now. Oh, and the Linux distro is free and stable and tested over years of service. But thanks for asking...

  80. Re:Two subnets in Windows Home on the same interfa by rnd0110 · · Score: 1

    The problem is how to setup it thru control panel. One network uses DHCP, another one static IP...

  81. classic non-debating tactic .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

    'Your wording is consistently confusing to me. You're not asking proper questions. Define "full functionality"'

    You define your understanding of the meaning of "full functionality" in the context of IPV6 and Vista TCP/IP.

    Rules of non-debating tactics:

    # 47: Pretend to not understand what the other fella said and accuse him of being confusing.
    # 48: Pretend to misunderstand the meaning of commonly used phrases, for instance 'full functionality'.
    # 49: Move the discussion to the meaning of particular words, for instance 'full functionality'.
    # 50: Personally insult the other fella.

    re: Mr. 'objective third-party': You're not on Usenet now so do try and be polite.


    was Re:full functionality != can communicate ..

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
    1. Re:classic non-debating tactic .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      Right. IPv6 is a protocol. Vista's TCP/IP stack is an implementation of a protocol (actually, of several protocols).

      If you were making sense, I'd respond to you. However, I can't find a way to take your words in any context other than that you do not understand what you're talking about.

      If you wrote a TCP/IP stack yourself, to "speak" the TCP and IP protocols, you would have just created an implementation of TCP/IP. Note that you did not write TCP or IP. That is the distinction here. The protocol just tells people what to say, and what to listen to. The stuff in the new implementation of that protocol in Vista includes certain optimisations. They do not break the protocol. They do not change the protocol. It does not "step on the toes" of IPv6.

    2. Re:classic non-debating tactic .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

      "If you were making sense, I'd respond to you"

      I'm sorry, I am going to pretend to find what you said as confusing. Besides which your definition of 'stack', 'implementation', 'protocol' and 'optimisations' is different than mine, which I'm not going to tell you.

      --
      davecb5620@gmail.com
    3. Re:classic non-debating tactic .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      Funny. Buy a book on networking, it should explain why your original question was completely irrelevant. You seem to believe I'm debating with you, when in fact there's nothing to debate.

    4. Re:classic non-debating tactic .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

      "Funny. Buy a book on networking, it should explain why your original question was completely irrelevant. You seem to believe I'm debating with you, when in fact there's nothing to debate"

      You're doing it again. How can a question be irrelevant. You make a statement and I ask for clarification. If you don't want to engage in anything remotely resembling rational debate then what the hack are you doing posting SIX replies consisting of nothingness.

      --
      davecb5620@gmail.com
    5. Re:classic non-debating tactic .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      I've been asking you for clarification! At first you asked what Vista's TCP/IP did that IPv6 didn't do; which doesn't really make sense since IPv6 doesn't "do" anything. Vista's TCP/IP stack implements IPv6, however. You then asked what Vista's TCP/IP stack did that required specific implementation; I replied to read the article. In the light of what you've said since, I should really have said "everything" — TCP and IP do not do anything, they're protocols. An implementation of a protocol is just the name given to a program which "speaks" that protocol.

      You then asked why the features couldn't be put in the protocol for IPv6. The answer is that they're not protocol features, they're implementation details. They just make it work better; a similar example would be changing, say, an XML parser so that it parses XML quicker, or more efficiently. It doesn't stop the input being XML.

      You then asked if non-Vista machines could implement the "full functionality" of TCP/IP. This depends on how you interpret "full functionality"; if you meant making systems which can do the same things (to the outside world) as Vista, sure. It's just TCP/IP. If you mean implementing the features, I also provided an answer for that:

      If they wanted to implement the same features, I think at least some of the features might be patent-protected. Which is a bit rubbish.

      You then started flaming me, claiming I was dodging the question, when in fact I had requested a clarification, provided two possible interpretations of your words, and answered both of them.

  82. Possibilities. by Grendel+Drago · · Score: 1

    Color management? Expensive calibrated monitors? A broken JPEG decoder on the Windows box?

    There are legit possibilities, but it's impossible to know if he meant anything like that or was just grasping his Mac in a religious fashion.

    --
    Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
  83. Re:-1 Linux Zealot (well... in slashdot might be + by dfghjk · · Score: 1

    "This would be like bringing up Windows 1.0 in a "who's gui came first discussion"."

    It's nothing like that. It's an undisputable fact that MS offered Windows products with integral TCP/IP software at a time when Linux was still in its infancy. The claim that Linux offered networking for years prior to MS's support of TCP/IP is just plain wrong.

    "Slackware's support for serious networking was actually very repectable in those days. I was a Slackware user then and even used ip masquerading to share a serial connection in those days."

    I would venture to guess that Windows NT 3.1 was a more robust server platform than Slackware 1.0. Nevertheless, they came into existence within a month of one another. Considering that Slackware was the first real distro and NT was available for a year prior to release in developer kits suggests that the statement was utterly false (regardless of how useful you personally found Slackware in those days).

    I didn't start using Linux until Red Hat 5.x and even at that mature (for linux) date I found it to be a joke. I immediately dumped it for FreeBSD which was far superior. I wouldn't consider even by RH5 for networking to be "well supported in Linux" in my experience.

  84. clarification needed .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

    I've been asking you for clarification! ..

    Rules of non-debating tactics:

    # 51: Ignore repeated requests for clear answers.
    # 52: Accuse the other fella of not being clear.
    # 53: Move attention off the original question.
    # 54: Incorrectly re-state what the other fella said.

    You know bloody well what I mean .."What does Vista TCP/IP do that IPV6 cannot and I don't mean such feetures that are welded to the Vista API", RS

    I'm sorry, your being very confusing and I'm going to have to ask you for clarification. I will of course mistate what you said and proceed to dissect the meaning of specific words while not actually addressing what you asked. I will of course neglect to actually give a straight answer.

    was Re:classic non-debating tactic .. (Score:2)

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
    1. Re:clarification needed .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      What does Vista TCP/IP do that IPV6 cannot

      Nothing. IPv6 is a protocol, and Vista implements it. Its implementation details can only be compared to other implementations, and as such the question doesn't really make a lot of sense.

      and I don't mean such feetures that are welded to the Vista API

      None of the features are "welded to the Vista API". I'm not certain any of them are directly available through the Vista API.

    2. Re:clarification needed .. by rs232 · · Score: 1

      "as such the question doesn't really make a lot of sense"

      # 55: Pretend to not understand the question.

      Most people would have left off not answering the question nine msgs ago. You should go back to patrolling Usenet 'where OCD sufferers participate in binary circle jerk to a point that letters become eroded from keyboard'. I will let you have the last word as I can see you're a bit obsessive about it.

      --
      davecb5620@gmail.com
    3. Re:clarification needed .. by zootm · · Score: 1

      I don't use Usenet, and generally I try to help people out with computer problems. You seemed to have a lack of understanding about protocols versus implementations, so I tried to explain this. I'll let you get back to your trolling. :)