Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP SP3 Causing Router Crashes
KrispyBytes writes "Windows XP SP3 has been named as the culprit causing home routers to go into a crash and reboot cycle. One router maker has released firmware updates to fix the problem, but has not yet revealed what is actually different about XP SP3's networking stack or UPnP behaviour that causes the problem. Router maker Billion Managing Director Raaj Menon said "as Microsoft plans to make Windows XP SP3 an automatic upgrade this month, the number of affected routers may increase significantly.""
If an upgrade to a router caused Windows to enter a reboot cycle would we be blaming the router manufacturer or Microsoft?
It only affects the "Billion BiPAC 5200" series.
I've never used one, never seen one, never heard of one, and you haven't either. Odd how the summary fails to mention that the problem is only with this obscure model...
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
As some have said, if a machine on the network can crash the router(short of violating physical specs for things like ethernet voltage and polarity), then the router has Issues.
What I don't understand is why so many of your basic 4 ports lan, one port wan, and an antenna type routers have such lousy firmware. I understand that the hardware is built right down to price, and isn't going to be exciting; but software is a different matter. There are really only a few chipset variations in general use, OpenWRT supports most of them and provides a solid and extensible foundation. ddWRT is less extensible and flashier, still solid. Tomatoe is out there as well. In a world where people are literally giving high quality router firmware away, how can anybody ship a router with bad firmware?
Billion makes crappy knock-off routers, that were crashing or not working long before XP SP3 was released. Perhaps XPSP3 does do something different with uPNP, but that's not where the blame needs to be assigned. As an aside, uPNP is a crappy idea. Do you really want your OS and any programs (malware included) to have the ability to change your external firewall?
That doesn't make sense, though. Option 43 is sent by the DHCP server to the client. In this case the SP3 machine is the client and the router is the server. It's the server's responsibility to correctly format the vendor-specific data according to the vendor's spec, but the SP3 box shouldn't be the server in the scenario in question.
>just like a website should never crash a browser it is relevent that the OS/website is abusing the specifications soo badly to cause the crashes.
All browsers MUST expect garbage input, and pretty much anyone who expects otherwise has their head in the sand, and shouldn't go NEAR code. Document formats don't run in local memory and do not have system access - they're interpreted structures. If a browser crashes, it's the browser's (or it's plugins) fault, 100% of the blame 100% of the time. At worst, you should expect degraded-looking content and that's that.
I don't mean to be snarky, but your argument couldn't be more wrong or inappropriate. With networking, you're pretty close to the physical layer (not a great analogy, but browser code is far removed from traffic and is just a local representation, a user application).
We don't know yet what this is caused by. If it is affecting a lot of routers, it might very well be a "DOS". Or it could be something that holds too many connections open, or IP6 traffic that doesn't go anywhere and ties up the router table till it times out.
This could happen to Linux also, but it's less probable -- it's be code put out in the wild, and the distro's would do their own QA process, and may hold back. Most distros don't run kernel.org kernels, but their own patched tree.
While my router is working fine, my Windows laptop's shares fail to show up on my other machines and this happened straight after installing SP3 and all my settings imply nothing has changed. I just need to get another Windows machine in here to see if it's only being ignored by Linux machines.
Maybe it's a coincidence and maybe it's not. The only way to know for sure is if Microsoft honestly comments on it.