Blasted Windows!

On the off-chance that anyone might have seen these issues, here are two as-yet-unsolved Windows XP mysteries that I’m seeing on a system I’m working on:

1. The system’s network connection is absurdly flaky. I’m running SSH, VNC, and HTTP servers on this system, and when I’m logged in via SSH or VNC, the connection dies at least once every 5-10 minutes, sometimes as often as 2 or 3 times per minute. When accessing the system’s web server, I get an incomplete load on maybe 1 out of 10 visits to the exact same page. (But I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t a Verizon DSL issue, or an issue with the Westell modem+router they provide.)

2. Most systems automatically switch to StandBy mode after a period of idleness, and then stay there until you move the mouse or hit a key. This system switches to StandBy whenever it feels like it, even when you’re actively using the keyboard and mouse. But then it realizes right away that it’s made a terrible mistake, so the StandBy screen just flashes up for a second and then goes away.

And this Westell modem/router does the same stupid thing as the Belkin router that I returned a couple months ago: it won’t let you access a server on your network from a system on your network through the public IP address.

It’s mind-boggling how many companies can exist and make money by producing such utter crap.

Posted by Anthony on Jul 8, 2005 | 4 replies
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Networking, Stupidity, Tech

Comments:

01. Jul 8, 2005 at 10:12am by Kev:

Get a Linksys! ;) I’ve said it here in the past a few times... :)

02. Jul 8, 2005 at 10:50am by Anthony:

I certainly would get a device from one of the real networking-gear companies (Linksys, D-Link, Netgear), but this isn’t my system, and the modem+router is an ISP-provided device. And I suspect it may be ISP-required; I can’t find anything on the Verizon website about using your own modem/router with the service.

To make matters even worse, apparently the connection seems fine for outgoing traffic, i.e. the owner uses it for email and web-surfing and doesn’t notice the connection being dropped. But that makes sense because the drops are just momentary; as soon as I lose the connection, I can log in again (SSH or VNC) immediately. So you’d mostly only notice it on connections where you’re continuously logged in (like SSH or VNC), and it’d be much less apparent during an intermittent and bursty activity like web-surfing. And even when a webpage fails to load or loads incompletely, you just hit the reload button and it works fine, so you wouldn’t necessarily think that is your connection being crappy.

03. Jul 8, 2005 at 04:14pm by Tasha Moyer:

Just checking for my picture :0)

04. Jul 8, 2005 at 04:15pm by Tasha Moyer:

WHERE IS IT!