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Windows Networking: Why does it suck so?
Jun. 27th, 2004 10:25 pmYesterday I finally set up my new computer. It's fast, it's got a good network connection, it's running Windows XP (a fairly recent release, with all fresh security patches).
After many hours of tinkering with XP network settings, Norton Internet Security, goat entrails, and cetera, I managed to get it to connect to the file shares on my old Win98 machine. Well, sorta. I can see my older machine (Y) from my new machine (A), get directory listings, and so forth, but when I actually try to do file copies, they crap out--very little or nothing gets transferred before the connection gives up (which often takes five minutes or so, with nothing transferred in the interval).
It's actually probably unfair to solely blame Windows Networking, though. Direct TCP/IP connections--say, an FTP connection--over the household network *also* suck, with transfer rates as low as 1K per second. (I can get 300K/second or more on connections to servers outside the household network, from either machine.) And TCP/IP connections are still unreliable, crapping out at unpredicable points.
Here are some of the details. The machines are both connected to an 802.11a wireless network, routed through a D-Link DL-704 connected to a D-Link wireless access point. As noted above, both connections are pretty strong and reliable. I enabled IPX/SPX networking on A to allow it access to the shares on Y.
Can anyone make suggests for improvement which don't involve abandoning Windows? (I need Windows XP for some work-related projects, which is why I bought the new machine in the first place.) I'm suspecting that the network router or the access point is doing a crappy job of routing packets within my household network; is there any way to test this hypothesis, or improve it?
After many hours of tinkering with XP network settings, Norton Internet Security, goat entrails, and cetera, I managed to get it to connect to the file shares on my old Win98 machine. Well, sorta. I can see my older machine (Y) from my new machine (A), get directory listings, and so forth, but when I actually try to do file copies, they crap out--very little or nothing gets transferred before the connection gives up (which often takes five minutes or so, with nothing transferred in the interval).
It's actually probably unfair to solely blame Windows Networking, though. Direct TCP/IP connections--say, an FTP connection--over the household network *also* suck, with transfer rates as low as 1K per second. (I can get 300K/second or more on connections to servers outside the household network, from either machine.) And TCP/IP connections are still unreliable, crapping out at unpredicable points.
Here are some of the details. The machines are both connected to an 802.11a wireless network, routed through a D-Link DL-704 connected to a D-Link wireless access point. As noted above, both connections are pretty strong and reliable. I enabled IPX/SPX networking on A to allow it access to the shares on Y.
Can anyone make suggests for improvement which don't involve abandoning Windows? (I need Windows XP for some work-related projects, which is why I bought the new machine in the first place.) I'm suspecting that the network router or the access point is doing a crappy job of routing packets within my household network; is there any way to test this hypothesis, or improve it?
