Vista Vexes

by Jan Fagerholm

August 2007

Vista Networking/Notworking

I’ve been sitting on this installment of Vista Vexes for some time now, partly to let my irritation factor go down and partly in hopes of some fixes coming out, but neither one is happening, so I’m gonna talk about it anyway. The topic is Windows networking.

I’m sitting at my work computer which is presently plugged into a Unix network running BSD Unix on three servers with two routers. One of the servers handles DHCP chores (in English, DHCP means it automatically gives a network address to any computer that plugs in to it), and I am having the same experience with Vista that I have had at the other two Unix networks that I plug this machine into. The connection randomly gets lost and restarting the network card doesn’t always fix it - often you have to restart the whole computer to trigger the network configuration from the ground up. My experience with Vista is only marginally better in a Windows network.

This problem is compounded when there is more than one router in the system, as Vista binds networking to both simultaneously which then blocks the Internet connection - you can see the other computers on the network, but Vista can’t figure out which gateway to use for the Internet. This problem is often (but not always) fixed by disabling the network card then enabling it again. If that doesn’t work, the next step is rebooting the machine. If rebooting doesn’t work, I have a real problem - the only way to get on is to restart the DHCP server. This is not welcome in a 24 station network where 24 other people would rather continue working with their computers. Mind you, I don’t have any of these problems if I use OS X or Linux on a Windows network - they both use Samba and they see everything fine.

Microsoft made some changes to networking in Vista from XP, but much of it assumes a Windows network with a domain - not needed in a small business environment. Vista’s networking in strongly tied to domains and Active Directory which adds unnecessary complexity to basic networking. The best analogy for this is what Microsoft has done with Office 2007, where Word no longer uses simple tables or spreadsheets for mail merge, but requires the list to be in an Access database. This is similar to firing up an 18-wheeler semi to get to the store for a loaf of bread: it’s inefficient, it’s overkill and shouldn’t be required for such a simple task.

Vista networking seems to be built on the same bloated philosophy. There are many more diagnostic wizards in Vista than there are in XP, there are many more layers on the network interface, but the results are much the same; they work less than half the time. The most reliable fix remains disabling the network card then enabling it, but it takes three more steps in Vista than it did in XP. (That is, if you use the GUI. Tip for the day: fire up Command Prompt and type in ipconfig renew <Enter>. Twice as fast and does more cleanup.)

If you run Vista in a simple peer-to-peer home network, you will probably not have many of the problems that I’m speaking about. The reason I’m so critical is that my experience with non- Windows networks and operating systems is much more favorable. Macintosh OS X and Linux networks just work better. Being Unix based, they have more experience with TCP/IP. Microsoft is a latecomer to TCP/IP networking. In my estimation, Windows adds too many nonessential layers to TCP/IP that interfere with basic functionality. Zero configuration works in OS X and Linux much better than in Windows, and dropouts are virtually unknown in these two OSs.

Vista offers many more wizards and GUI tools for networking than XP does, but there is a price. All the networking stuff is arranged completely different in Vista compared to XP - forget everything you know about where things are when you move to Vista. All dialog boxes have fewer choices, meaning you have to go through more of them to find what you want. Microsoft says simplifying the dialogs is supposed to be “easier” for newbies, but that flies in the face of twenty years of research showing that most people get lost after three mouse clicks. Navigating is more complex and reliability take a hit compared to XP. I can only hope that Microsoft works very hard on streamlining the interface and improving reliability.