Vista's Long Goodbye strikes again New data documenting quirky networking characteristics in Vista have surfaced courtesy of Windows architecture guru Mark Russinovich, who confirms that simply by playing media files, users can bring throughput in Microsoft's new and improved operating system to a screeching halt. The degradation is caused by a new feature …
Lets see they are trying to make sure that XP isn't patched
easily and meanwhile they keep screwing up wga or whatever
and then there is this little bit of retarded nonsense great
let them continue they are doing everything I want them to.
Possibly they could work faster but hey it's MS.
Jason, you have to unassociate audio from MMCSS, as the bottom of the article mentions.
The Register totally missed an important post yesterday morning by one of the involved developers explaining the rationale behind the behavior: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/08/28/windows-vista-sound-causes-network-throughput-slowdowns.aspx
I only mention because there's been a truckload of uninformed commentary going on around it, not that it's unexpected.
I bet the hardcoded limit was thrown in there by someone who was going to run some tests to figure out what the right formula would be... and ended up forgetting all about it as more pressing issues showed up. That's why // TODO is so important. :p
MS, just give up! Its not broken, It just doesn't work!!!! Its crap and you made a mess of it like you always do! 'Windows Vista is the most secure Operating System on the market'
Well yeah! cos no one can get it to work!!!!
This is the last straw for me, Rolling back tonight as this answers why all my media players hang and crash and cause endless trouble. Goodbye Vista, Hello XP SP2.
Has anyone at Microsoft ever heard of this fancy newfangled thing called a "server"? Many servers do have integrated audio, especially high-end workstations being used as servers. Even casting servers aside, I'm sure there are a lot of people like myself who would prefer to keep the network running smoothly than keep a workstation's audio running smoothly. If it's the choice between my network slowing to a crawl or having slightly-chopping audio, I'll go with the slightly-choppy audio. Besides, with WinAmp, I can set the priority for my audio so as to achieve no chopping at all. Then again, I don't use stupid, completely pointless, processor-hogging "visualisations" while I'm listening to audio, either.
Sounds like a typical office network with netbios broadcast running wild.
Most network traces I run show an average packet size way below 1500 bytes, there are ack packets and all the network overhead stuff - ARP, DNS lookup.........
Average more like 500 - 750 bytes, which halves the effective throughput.
And what about all these lost packets screwing up your network applications and forcing error recovery?
that I'lll now be able to copy a small file on my hard drive without having to go and make a cup of tea while i wait?
If this service is at fault its definately hit more than just network throughput, unless of course vista routes everything through its networking code no matter where its going to end up?
I've been playing with this for a while... Interestingly enough, if you share a folder on the Vista PC, then use another PC on the network to browse to that share, you can copy to and from it at a proper rate (from the other PC). Vista only seems to slow the network performance if it initiates the copy/move.
I'm sorry, I just don't understand. Even as someone that writes software for a living I just don't get it.
For as long as I can remember I have been able to play music on windows with no problem whatsoever even when it did jump it was normally because I had the machine doing something that I actually wanted it to do and that something was normally more important that the music anyway.
Are they honestly saying that Vista is so crap at playing media that we should perhaps all go get an IPOD instead? Seriously, its just never been an issue.
Firewire represents yet another network card in your system... A notebook might easily drop to 4000 packets per second if it's got all the bells and whistles if the pattern the article gives is right. For that matter, what happens when you've got some idiotic software from your isp that adds logical network devices to the system?
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/08/28/windows-vista-sound-causes-network-throughput-slowdowns.aspx
"may be an extreme example but I've got 7 adapters on my machine. 2 VPN, a 1394, a LAN, a WLAN and two VMWare. Does this affect the speeds or does the adapters need to be in-use? I guess that 2 (or three if "1394" counts) is standard nowadays?"
Reply: "The VPN and 1394 don't count, but the vmware ones do.
That's a part of the things we need to fix."
So, Firewire adaptors and VPN adaptors won't affect it.
Knowing the attention to detail those programmers Microsoft allegedly has (you know.. the ones that can't make an email or browser app just work properly)... do you think localhost is also considered a network interface as well?
Imagine an exploit based on streaming something from 127.0.0.1
<Pinky_in_Mouth> Frikkin' awesome </>
This post has been deleted by its author
Firstly, no you shouldn't by an ipod... they belong to the enemy, what you want is a zune player!!
But what you need to remember is that vista wasn't written to do anything useful, it was designed to look pretty, and I guess that sound is part of that.
Something more important than listening to backgound music? You must be joking... we can see what the priorities are in redmond.
Does make you wonder why their music on hold is so poor though!!
I've had the RC release for vista using Nvidia network cards (core cpu is not used, dedicated cpu) and I havn't had an issue.
I've also got vista at work, again no issues.
However, I will admit, my 2nd desktop at home, with a dlink and 3com network card, has "issues". During transfers, it will CRAWL if I got videos running, but those are "software" based nic's. Just saying.
Before the knives and guns come out I would like to point out that we have a mix of users here and different expectations. I have found that Vista for home use is ok. Not great, but ok. As an IT professional, I wouldn't touch it no matter how much you paid me.
I recently built a new PC for home. (AMD 64AM2 Duel Core, 1GB Mem, Nvidia 8500) While picking out the parts, the question of supporting Vista came up among the various family members so I decided to build it with that in mind. I have XP and Vista on 2 removable drives so I can easily switch back and forth. Next on my list is to get bench mark software installed on both. However, as it is right now I can tell XP is faster. Actually XP running a couple of apps is still noticeably faster than Vista running no apps.
For just home use I haven’t had any problems; however at work while testing I have had all sorts of performance issues – mostly network related. And let us be honest, for home users what is normally run? IE, Outlook, games, and maybe Word and Excel? For an Admin we need to use network and printer shares, worry about connecting to a domain and existing infrastructure. Vista just isn’t ready for that yet.
Us IT people tend to be really concerned about performance. It is a lot like the guys in the ‘60s and ‘70s who used to tune up their cars. If you had to add a turbocharger and a blower to your new car just to get the same horsepower as your last car, wouldn’t you bitch a bit too?
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