Internet Explorer on Windows always seems either to run impossibly fast (page requests are fulfilled almost before the mouse button has returned to its original unclicked position), or ridiculously slow (as with the weird stalling-on-connect problem that many people, including myself, have noticed).
One possible explanation is something that my team and I noticed a couple of years ago, in analyzing packet traces of IE's connection setup procedure. Microsoft might have fixed this since then; I'm not sure. But it's a possible culprit.
First of all, for those rusty on their TCP/IP-- here's how a normal HTTP request over TCP should work:
Client Server 1. SYN -> 2. 4. Request ->
This is how the client and server synchronize their sequence numbers, which is how a connection gets established. The client sends a synchronization request, the server acknowledges it and sends a synchronization request of its own, and the client acknowledges that. Only then can the HTTP request proceed reliably.
The server's SYN (synchronize) and ACK (acknowledgement) packets are combined for speed; there's no reason to send two separate packets, when you're trying to get a connection established as quickly as possible. Another speed enhancement that Mac OS 9's stack uses, by the way, is to combine the client's ACK and the HTTP request into a single packet; this is legal, but not frequently done. The idea is that within the structure of TCP/IP, you want to minimize the number of transactions that need to take place in setting up the two-way handshake necessary before you can send the HTTP request.
When tearing down a connection, it looks like this:
Client Server 1. 3. FIN -> 4.
Uh... what? Dunno what the hell this is. I'll ignore it, or RST. 2. Oh, you're a standard server. Okay: SYN -> 3. 5. Request ->
In other words, instead of sending a SYN packet like every other TCP/IP application in the world, IE would send out the request packet first of all. Just to check. Just in case the HTTP server was, oh, say, a Microsoft IIS server. Because IIS' HTTP teardown sequence looked like this:
Client Server 1....And that's it. The client doesn't FIN, and the server doesn't ACK. In other words, the connection is kept "half-open" on the server end. The reason for this? Why, to make subsequent connections from IE clients faster. If the connection isn't torn down all the way, all IE has to do is send an HTTP request, with no preamble-- and the server will immediately respond. Ingenious!
They probably called it "Microsoft Active Web AccelerationX(TM)®" or something.
(I may be remembering this incorrectly; it might be that the client does FIN, and the server simply keeps the connection around after it ACKs it. Instead of shutting down the connection entirely, it just waits to see if that client will come back, so it can open the connection back up immediately instead of having to go through that whole onerous SYN-SYN/ACK procedure. Damn rules!)
Now, what does this mean for non-IIS servers? It means that if you use IE to connect to them, it first tries to send that initial request packet, without any SYNs-- and then it only proceeds with the standard TCP connection setup procedure if the request packet gets a RST or no response (either of which is a valid way for a legal stack to deal with an unsynchronized packet). But IIS, playing by its own rules, would respond to that packet with an HTTP response right away, without bothering to complete the handshake. So IE to IIS servers will be nice and snappy, especially on subsequent connections after the first one. But IE to non-IIS servers waste a packet at the beginning of each request-- and depending on how the server handles that illegal request, it might immediately RST it, or it might just time out... which would make the browser seem infuriatingly slow to connect to new websites.
This is only marginally less stupid than RunTCP's "solution"-- and I say "marginally" only because in the grand scheme of things, this probably makes sense to Microsoft's network engineers. After all, eventually all clients will be Windows platforms running IE, and all servers will be Windows platforms running IIS. And then we can break all kinds of rules! Rules are only there to hold us back and force us to play nice with other vendors. Well, once the other vendors are all gone, who cares about some stupid RFC?
I have to admire their arrogance and their confidence. But it'll be some time before I can bring myself to admire their technical integrity.
There certainly were crappy, forgetable buildings back in the days (50, 100, 200 years ago) but those places were torn down for newer ones. It was only the places worth saving, or the ones build well enough to last, that remain today; so thats why people automatically assume that all of the buildings built in the past were of much higher quality. All we see today are the high quality buildings.
Hogwash I say! We've been building forgettable, throw-away structures forever - theres nothing new about it today.
Thats because the Taliban grew it own for their own profit.. anybody else growing it was a captial offense.
Even though its banned in their religion, they had no problem selling it to non-muslims.
Come down to the South sometime. the trendy bars, where guys who wear black turtle necks and gotees have PBR (in a can) available. the 'alternative' bars, where guys and girls wear their 3rd grade Don't Do drugs t-shirts have PBR (in a can) available. Shoot, even the upscale grocery stores around here carry PBR (in a can and in bottles!)
yup, doesn't get any better anywhere else...(note, Atlanta is not in the south)
So then what if I recorded it for my own use, and then let my buddy Duane borrow it? Is that illegal?
What if then Duane made a VHS copy for himself? Is that illegal?
The answer is no and no, if you're wondering. It sounds to me like you've been brainwashed by 'the man'.
How does changing mediums suddenly make something illegal?
yea, I've got a middle of the road Sony noise canceling headphones, and I've probably used them just as much without music as I have with music.
Theres a switch to turn the cancleing on/off.
One time, I had them on (with no music) and a stardess walkup to me and asked a question directly towards me.. I couldn't hear a word she was saying! Ahh.. bliss!
These are great books, btw. I've got a copy called "The Secret Guide to Computers" no volume number mentioned, but it is the 14th edition apparently...
The ISBN for it is 0-939151-14-6, but its not printed inside the book anywhere.
Apparently, they're still being printed too the 27th! edition just came out. --http://www.angelfire.com/nh/secret/ [angilfire.com]
'Episode IV: a new hope' was added to the scrolling titles in Starwars when Empire was released.
Don't believe me? just ask Google. its out there somewhere.
You have apparently never built a credit card processing app. All you need to charge someones credit card is the number. There is no verification of the exp date, name, street address, etc.
I also discovered tortoise through Napster. And through them I stumbled onto bands like The Sea and Cake, Japancakes.. and then even over into Medeski, Martin, and Wood.
There are some GREAT bands out there.. you just won't find them on the radio or at the WalMart.
(and for the record, while I did d/l every album those bands have released.. I went on to purchased quite a few of them. But thats still much more so than I would have if I never would have found them!!)
yea. I was never blown away by quake. I quickly got bored and never even finished the game...
but Doom and Doom2, now those were some amazing games for the day!! I can still hear the Doom soundtrack in my head, just in the same way the soundtracks on Super Mario Brothers for the NES and Tetris on the gameboy infected my brain.
They say that "We want to become the Microsoft of handheld devices" but then what about this.
Doesn't claiming that you want to be the leader in a market, by 'becoming' one of your competitors in that same market imply that you have already lost?
This is exactly what I've done.. and it works great!!!
It has totally changed my viewing habits. My VCR hasn't been plugged in since last year sometime, and I get to watch my shows when I want, and how I want.
There is one step you forgot though.
Grab the DiVX:) codec and hit IRC/Usenet to load up on simpsons/seinfeld/dark angel/whatever
Slashdot Mirror
Straight from the site.......
...And that's it. The client doesn't FIN, and the server doesn't ACK. In other words, the connection is kept "half-open" on the server end. The reason for this? Why, to make subsequent connections from IE clients faster. If the connection isn't torn down all the way, all IE has to do is send an HTTP request, with no preamble-- and the server will immediately respond. Ingenious!
Internet Explorer on Windows always seems either to run impossibly fast (page requests are fulfilled almost before the mouse button has returned to its original unclicked position), or ridiculously slow (as with the weird stalling-on-connect problem that many people, including myself, have noticed).
One possible explanation is something that my team and I noticed a couple of years ago, in analyzing packet traces of IE's connection setup procedure. Microsoft might have fixed this since then; I'm not sure. But it's a possible culprit.
First of all, for those rusty on their TCP/IP-- here's how a normal HTTP request over TCP should work:
Client Server
1. SYN ->
2.
4. Request ->
This is how the client and server synchronize their sequence numbers, which is how a connection gets established. The client sends a synchronization request, the server acknowledges it and sends a synchronization request of its own, and the client acknowledges that. Only then can the HTTP request proceed reliably.
The server's SYN (synchronize) and ACK (acknowledgement) packets are combined for speed; there's no reason to send two separate packets, when you're trying to get a connection established as quickly as possible. Another speed enhancement that Mac OS 9's stack uses, by the way, is to combine the client's ACK and the HTTP request into a single packet; this is legal, but not frequently done. The idea is that within the structure of TCP/IP, you want to minimize the number of transactions that need to take place in setting up the two-way handshake necessary before you can send the HTTP request.
When tearing down a connection, it looks like this:
Client Server
1.
3. FIN ->
4.
Uh... what? Dunno what the hell this is. I'll ignore it, or RST.
2. Oh, you're a standard server. Okay: SYN ->
3.
5. Request ->
In other words, instead of sending a SYN packet like every other TCP/IP application in the world, IE would send out the request packet first of all. Just to check. Just in case the HTTP server was, oh, say, a Microsoft IIS server. Because IIS' HTTP teardown sequence looked like this:
Client Server
1.
They probably called it "Microsoft Active Web AccelerationX(TM)®" or something.
(I may be remembering this incorrectly; it might be that the client does FIN, and the server simply keeps the connection around after it ACKs it. Instead of shutting down the connection entirely, it just waits to see if that client will come back, so it can open the connection back up immediately instead of having to go through that whole onerous SYN-SYN/ACK procedure. Damn rules!)
Now, what does this mean for non-IIS servers? It means that if you use IE to connect to them, it first tries to send that initial request packet, without any SYNs-- and then it only proceeds with the standard TCP connection setup procedure if the request packet gets a RST or no response (either of which is a valid way for a legal stack to deal with an unsynchronized packet). But IIS, playing by its own rules, would respond to that packet with an HTTP response right away, without bothering to complete the handshake. So IE to IIS servers will be nice and snappy, especially on subsequent connections after the first one. But IE to non-IIS servers waste a packet at the beginning of each request-- and depending on how the server handles that illegal request, it might immediately RST it, or it might just time out... which would make the browser seem infuriatingly slow to connect to new websites.
This is only marginally less stupid than RunTCP's "solution"-- and I say "marginally" only because in the grand scheme of things, this probably makes sense to Microsoft's network engineers. After all, eventually all clients will be Windows platforms running IE, and all servers will be Windows platforms running IIS. And then we can break all kinds of rules! Rules are only there to hold us back and force us to play nice with other vendors. Well, once the other vendors are all gone, who cares about some stupid RFC?
I have to admire their arrogance and their confidence. But it'll be some time before I can bring myself to admire their technical integrity.
buy a Replay unut, and then check this out
http://www.planetreplay.com/
It is pretty close to Napster (and one of the reasons I bought a PVR)
She also said "Da-Diddily Do-Diddily" once as well too...
never do what again?
buy an Xbox??
What does that mean? Better say something or they'll think I'm stupid.
Takes one to know one.
You know what I think it is?
There certainly were crappy, forgetable buildings back in the days (50, 100, 200 years ago) but those places were torn down for newer ones.
It was only the places worth saving, or the ones build well enough to last, that remain today; so thats why people automatically assume that all of the buildings built in the past were of much higher quality. All we see today are the high quality buildings.
Hogwash I say! We've been building forgettable, throw-away structures forever - theres nothing new about it today.
Thats because the Taliban grew it own for their own profit
Even though its banned in their religion, they had no problem selling it to non-muslims.
Come down to the South sometime.
the trendy bars, where guys who wear black turtle necks and gotees have PBR (in a can) available.
the 'alternative' bars, where guys and girls wear their 3rd grade Don't Do drugs t-shirts have PBR (in a can) available.
Shoot, even the upscale grocery stores around here carry PBR (in a can and in bottles!)
yup, doesn't get any better anywhere else...(note, Atlanta is not in the south)
Trey Anastasio's latest album was pretty good, IMO.
and Wilco's latest too (even though that was recorded last year).
I've heard tracks from both on the radio, so I guess thats makes them mainstream.
So then what if I recorded it for my own use, and then let my buddy Duane borrow it? Is that illegal?
What if then Duane made a VHS copy for himself? Is that illegal?
The answer is no and no, if you're wondering. It sounds to me like you've been brainwashed by 'the man'.
How does changing mediums suddenly make something illegal?
yea, I've got a middle of the road Sony noise canceling headphones, and I've probably used them just as much without music as I have with music.
.. I couldn't hear a word she was saying! Ahh .. bliss!
Theres a switch to turn the cancleing on/off.
One time, I had them on (with no music) and a stardess walkup to me and asked a question directly towards me
I'll second that. Fusebox has really improved the CF code at our shop.
For what its worth...
I've got the entire run of seinfeld stored in VCD quality (DivX encoded though) on my file server at home. Takes up about 40 gigs.
These are great books, btw. I've got a copy called "The Secret Guide to Computers" no volume number mentioned, but it is the 14th edition apparently...
The ISBN for it is 0-939151-14-6, but its not printed inside the book anywhere.
Apparently, they're still being printed too the 27th! edition just came out. --http://www.angelfire.com/nh/secret/ [angilfire.com]
Was the "play once" or "rip once".
Nope.
'Episode IV: a new hope' was added to the scrolling titles in Starwars when Empire was released.
Don't believe me? just ask Google. its out there somewhere.
Um.. can we get some mod points for the above logical, well thought out, and well expressed comments?
You have apparently never built a credit card processing app.
All you need to charge someones credit card is the number. There is no verification of the exp date, name, street address, etc.
EuroDisney Failed?
Annual Results 2000 [eurodisney.com]
I,m currently backpacking through Turkey.
I just pýcked up some Tutti-Fruýty flavored Star Wars gum in a village of about 2000 people.
I also discovered tortoise through Napster. And through them I stumbled onto bands like The Sea and Cake, Japancakes .. and then even over into Medeski, Martin, and Wood.
.. you just won't find them on the radio or at the WalMart.
.. I went on to purchased quite a few of them. But thats still much more so than I would have if I never would have found them!!)
There are some GREAT bands out there
(and for the record, while I did d/l every album those bands have released
yea. I was never blown away by quake. I quickly got bored and never even finished the game...
but Doom and Doom2, now those were some amazing games for the day!!
I can still hear the Doom soundtrack in my head, just in the same way the soundtracks on Super Mario Brothers for the NES and Tetris on the gameboy infected my brain.
They say that "We want to become the Microsoft of handheld devices" but then what about this.
Doesn't claiming that you want to be the leader in a market, by 'becoming' one of your competitors in that same market imply that you have already lost?
Or...
The greater you tighter your grip, the more galaxies will slip through your fingers.
It has totally changed my viewing habits. My VCR hasn't been plugged in since last year sometime, and I get to watch my shows when I want, and how I want.
There is one step you forgot though.
Grab the DiVX:) codec and hit IRC/Usenet to load up on simpsons/seinfeld/dark angel/whatever
Ahhh bliss!!!!!!