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Mark Russinovich On Vista Network Slowdown
koro666 writes "In his latest blog post, Mark Russinovich analyzes the network slowdown experienced by some users when playing multimedia content. 'Tests of MMCSS during Vista development showed that... heavy network traffic can cause enough long-running DPCs to prevent playback threads from keeping up with their media streaming requirements, resulting in glitching. MMCSS' glitch-resistant mechanisms were therefore extended to include throttling of network activity. It does so by issuing a command to the NDIS device driver... [to] pass along, at most 10 packets per millisecond (10,000 packets per second)... [T]he networking team is actively working with the MMCSS team on a fix that allows for not so dramatically penalizing network traffic, while still delivering a glitch-resistant experience.'"
Slower Network Cards.
Then why exactly XP can handle the music just fine on the very same network card on the very same computer on the very same network?The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
As a long-time Linux user (over 10 years) I was always in the "Windows Sucks" camp. Recently I decided to really understand windows at the level of my understanding of Linux. I just finished a 5 year stint doing Linux systems level programming with the latter 2 years doing more on BSD. After reading "Windows Systems Progamming" by Johnson Hart, I was astonished at the complexity of the windows api (win32). Things that are really straight forward with posix programming are a genuine mess with win32. The nubmer of synchronization mechanisms is overwhelming. But after a while you begin to appreciate the flexiblity that the system provides. I decided to move on and buy "Microsoft Windows Internals" by Russinovich and Solomon and am currently reading that. Again, they expose some nasty details of windows and again you'll be saying to yourself, "Oh my god, they over engineered the shit out of this thing." But they continually bring up what the design goals were and again you begin to appreciate what Microsoft has accomplished with windows. Of course you can't expect the system to be flawless. Linux certainly isn't. If you're a windows user, just be glad there are people like Russinovich who can actually understand the windows kernel enough so that Microsoft can continue to make improvements. If you couldn't care less about windows, then I'd still reccomend either book. If you're into Linux (or any posix-like) systems level programming, check out Johnson Hart's book. It's audience is unix converts. If you're just interested in the windows kernel or are a sys admin, check out Russinovich's book. It's really interesting.
When my old XP HD crashed I was forced to use Vista exclusively for several weeks. It was like my computer was sick and in the hospital. No TV from my ATI x800 All-in-Wonder (though I did get the FM radio working after a week or two), sucky video game frame rates, unstable network card and sound card drivers and crap multimedia playback. P2P kept crashing the network stack.
Some people say that this isn't Microsoft's fault, it's those third party driver writers to blame. I say fuck that, these folks can write good drivers for the exact same computer in several other operating systems. It's Vista's fault.
MS fanboys will all come out and say their systems all work perfectly. Horseshit. I've now had hands on with more than two dozen Vista machines ranging from laptops to upgrades and in every single case, that's 100% MS fanboys, not 99%, not 80%, all of them had stuttering media playback.
There is no excuse for this sort of crap. My goodness it was such a relief to get an XP install back. My computer was perkier and all of a sudden everything worked again.
If Microsoft does not fix this with the mother of all service pack releases rewriting Vista from the core out then my next post-XP os will not be Windows. My best guess is Vista SP1 will be lipstick on a pig rather than the thorough cleaning out that poor excuse for a beta release really needs though.