Users wouldn't have to do this if Windows had a fully implimented IP stack. About a year ago a weekly industry MIS magazine ran a series of articles, by "networking industry experts," on why the internet or any scale based entirely on the Windows 95 and NT implimentation of TCP/IP, winsock. They saw a protocol that killed the network with retransmissions when there was congestion. Didn't adjust for differnt MTU on different media. Would break when the server was on a token ring (4k MTU) and the client was on an ethernet (1.5k MTU.) unless a registry setting was tweeked. It turns out that the registry setting clears the don't fragment bit in the IP header, its on by default. Its like Van Jacobson was never born! Where are this stacks backoff algorithms? Where is the MTU discovery? Where is window adjustment? The VJ additions to TCP/IP as well as contributions of many others make it scale. Yet, because of the marketplace, or monopoly, only one Washington or the other will decide, there are few options for Windows users. The market dried up when Winsock was included, and I see few of the competing vendors advertising that they have a complete stack that would remedy these issues. I won't blame Steve Bass, if the stacks on Windows computers really worked, his article would never have been necessary. His mistake is that he thinks he has discovered something we, the ISPs, are hiding from the users. We should let him know that its not us, but the secrets of Redmond, and the complacentcy of the marketplace when it accepts non-conformant code that needs to be uncovered. I have been searching the web for a document that describes the shortcomings of the Microsoft winsock implimentation of TCP/IP, I cannot find one. Yet far too often I am asked to resolve problems directly related to its misbehavior under congestion or lack of MTU discovery. Have others not run into these? Why isn't the word out? Where are the reviews in the press that would point these shortcommings out to potential users? As NT servers and workstation continue to grow on the net, these issues need to be addressed. They have already told me that NT 5.0 fixes all... I am not holding my breath, or is it Windows 2000 now. On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Jared Mauch wrote:

incase you see more pps stressing your network, or something of the sort, check this out for possible reason why:

http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9809/29/unclog.idg/

please follow reply-to header.

-- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/

-- Dan Boehlke, Senior Network Engineer M R N e t Internet: dboehlke@mr.net A MEANS Telcom Company Phone: 612-362-5814 2829 SE University Ave. Suite 200 WWW: http://www.mr.net/~dboehlke/ Minneapolis, MN 55414