Slashdot Mirror
Workarounds for Vista's Networking Problems?
tridium asks: "I recently moved into a new place where the landlord left a Linksys WRT54G v2 router for us to use. The three laptops in the house running XP connected to it fine, but my desktop, running Vista RC1 build 5600, had to be hardwired. The Internet worked fine for a bit, but I noticed some websites weren't loading up (Google, Gmail, and several others), and IM clients weren't working. Vista's self-diagnosis said it couldn't communicate with the DNS server, so I researched and it seems the new TCP stack in Vista is wreaking havoc with my router. I upgraded the firmware from Linksys, tried manually setting IP settings, modified the registry to disable TCP window stacking, but nothing helped. Linksys support was also useless in fixing the problem. I'm at a loss and any help, short of downgrading to XP, would be greatly appreciated." Other people have experienced problems getting Vista to work with off-the-shelf routers. A thread from September identifies the new window scaling feature as a potential culprit, while another article says that Vista and SPI-enabled routers don't play well together. Whether the problem is related is unknown, but another thread offers some troubleshooting tips for anyone else who may be experiencing this problem. Has anyone figured out how to disable (or at least work around) some of the more troubling aspects of Vista's new TCP 'features'?
Vista RC1 build 5600?
For starters, try, oh, I dunno, a newer RC, if you were part of the test, or...wait for it...the release version?
This sort of story makes me a bit ill. I know this is Slashdot and all, but can we please have SOME sort of filter for "my lonely pre-release copy of Vista dosen't work on my home network" stories?
Wait a month and buy the real version of Vista instead of using an old, unfinished release candidate.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The instructions at this url worked for me: http://www.tech-recipes.com/modules.php?name=Forum s&file=viewtopic&t=2602#7746
The article describes two separate issues: TCP window scaling, and SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection). These have very little to do with each other, excepting the fact that they're both networking features in Windows Vista.
From what I gather from a quick Google, the problem with TCP window scaling is actually one with crap routers that don't support the feature and misbehave upon encountering it. Furthermore, TCP window scaling is not new to Windows Vista. It was merely disabled by default in previous versions of Windows. The fix is extremely simple, see this article for information.
The second issue, with SPI, seems to indeed be a Vista bug, but I can find no evidence whatsoever that it exists in Vista RTM, or even RC1/RC2. It's seriously not "stuff that matters" anymore. Prerelease versions always have bugs! If you don't like it, wait for the RTM (or as is usually the case with Microsoft, the first service pack)!
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
W...T...F...?
If this place were even approximately "News for Nerds", Our Illustrious Editor would have realized that calling TCP Window Scaling "new" rises to the same level as referring to the recently-inaugurated Clinton administration. Literally: RFC 1323 dates to 1992.
I love the scare quotes around "features" at the end of the summary to. God forfend that that evil Micro$oft CORRECTLY implement a TCP standard.
Sigh. Look folks. In this case, MS isn't at fault. It's craptacular consumer-grade network gear which cuts corners on standards compliance. I acknowlege freely that MS is an evil monopolistic corporation bent on world domination, but in this case that's beside the point.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The problem is that most consumer-level hardware is only tested with the most common TCP settings, so, changing the TCP receive window (RWIN) or maximum transfer unit (MTU) often reveals hidden bugs in their TCP/IP implementations.
Even the subtle changes in timing of the packets may trigger previously undiscovered bugs.
In my case, the web interface of the Acorp LAN420 ADSL router was 'freezing' 75% of the times when accessed from Vista(RTM). Upgrading to the latest firmware solved this problem.
If everything else fails, you can try disabling RWIN scaling by running this as administator:
netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
(to see the list of available options, just run 'netsh interface tcp set global')
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
Both Vista RC1 and RC2 both had problems nwith the WRT54G series routers if you had your IPv6 stack enabled. These problems are resolved in the release version.
Install the latest firmware. And no, you didn't. And no, this isn't a Vista problem.
The WRT54G is no longer being maintained by Linksys. But fortunately... (and it's amazing nobody on Slashdot knows this... but then again they don't truly seem to know ANYTHING useful, ever) the firmware is based on Lunix. Thus, it's open source... and thus... other people can, and have, modified it. And maintained it!
The WRT54G firmware is still being maintained, but has branched a bit. I personally use HyperWRT+Thibor. It's closest to the stock firmware, and I don't feel like getting experimental with it. YMMV.
I've run into this problem with RC1, and occasionally standard XP machines wouldn't connect to Win update.
My solution? Change the MTU on the router to 1492. Problem solved.
--droog
Linux is not a substitute for Vista. Windows XP is, for now unless more and more people switch to Vista.
As long as people keep switching to the next MS version of windows MS will continue to have control.
If people stick with XP, then Linux and everyone else will have a chance.
http://slashdot.org/~TheLink/journal/158520