Lag every 60 seconds on wireless network

On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:12:34 -0800, dw5f7qz4 Has Frothed:

You're not using them both at the same time (unknowingly of course)? Not sure if disabling QoS would help but what the hell, give it a try.

Both XP's wireless and manufacturers software at the same time? No, for my new Netgear USB adapater, I installed only the drivers and avoided the software.

I tried disabling QoS without any difference.

(...)

There was a recent thread in alt.internet.wireless, where the OP had a similar problem with his Dell D600 laptop and Truemobile 1400 wireless card getting busy every 60 seconds. It could be seen as a glitch on the task manager. The culprit seems to be in the Dell Truemobile 1400 driver as it doesn't happen with the ethernet port or when the wireless card is disabled.

Start at:

's rather long unfortunately, as we slug our way through my various bad guesses. You might be able to learn something useful (such as disclosing the hardware that you're using).

Hi

Could be that the Brand drivers are not fully compatible with Windows Zero Configuration.

Log to the support site of the Brand, and look for the driver's last update.

Some time looking for the Card chipset manufacturer and finding OEM drivers for it to replace the Brand Drivers solve compatibility problems as well. As a theoretical example, a card is sold under Brand name X but the chipset is made by RALINK, downloading and installing the original drivers from RALINK might yield better results.

Jack (MVP-Networking).

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:01:22 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

That wouldn't explain why the spike is seen only with XP and not with the OEM software.

Lots of interesting asnwers but wrong on most parts in my opinion. The problem has to do with the Windows Zero Configuration program and the setting to check for other networks periodically. Periodically to microsoft is to check once every 60 seconds. When it does its check it goes into a scan modem and searches for other access points that may offer a better signal. It does not matter if you are sitting on top of the other access point and have a maximum signal strenght indicated it will still look.

As far as the comments on the vendor software being bloated I disagree. If Microsoft would quit trying to control everything on a PC and let the vendors for hardware use there drivers by default it would be much easier to solve problems or avoid them alltogether.

snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com wrote:

On 21 Nov 2006 15:37:40 -0800, "kbloch2001" wrote in :

Doesn't compute -- I'm using WZC and get no such spikes.

Respectfully disagree -- some of these 3rd-party driver packages are wildly bloated, Intel being a notable case in point at a mere 52 MB!

Don't know if this applies to you: I saw this once (in the beginning) when enabling WPA. I thought it was the result of WPA creating a new WEP key every minute. I solved this by upgrading the firmware of my WAP.

Peter

"kbloch2001" hath wroth:

That would make sense if Microsoft bothered to search for other networks AFTER it has successfully connected. The problem is that it doesn't. Wireless Zero Config will tenaciously stick to a connection even if there is a much stronger signal available using the same SSID. You can demonstrate this for yourself by attempting to roam between access points (using the same SSID). WZC will not switch to the stronger access point until it has literally lost the connection to the original access point. That's where the approximately 60 seconds happens as a keep alive. It tries to reconnect by assuming that there was no traffic to move. When it doesn't find the original access point, it will then switch to scan mode. Note that scan mode takes much longer than the 1 second or so shown on the ping responses. You can also unplug the first access point and time how long it takes for the client to switch to another access point with the same SSID. Last time I tried it, the connect time was about 10 to 40 seconds depending on where in the 60 second timing cycle the first access point was unplugged.

There are some other client managers that do a better job of switching access points. Intel Proset 10.x is one example. It even has settings at to how tenaciously it will remain connected to the initial access point.

I don't care if the driver is 1 GBloat big. All I care is that it works. A clue as to how well the MS WZC client manager is written is the stupid requirement to enter the WPA key twice. That may make sense for the access point, where a mistyped WPA key or password will prevent future access. However, it makes no sense on the client, where a typo error is simply corrected and retried.

Hi Most vendors prime goal is to sell their Hardware, even if it happen to be not fully compatible with Windows. There is lot of Hardware out there that did not pass solid QA. It usually bought by Off Brands and sold for little money (It is like a Car vendor that would buy all the Lemon Cars, and would sold them under his Own Brand "Lemon and Honey Cars"). However it is much easier for the common user to target Microsoft (The big American company) as the culprit, rather than getting upset with an obscure East Asian manufacturing shop. I am not a Microsoft employee, and I am very glad that I can offer this help as a Volunteer to the global community. After spending long time on this Newsgroup I can tell you that the vast majority of the complains on this specific newsgroup have nothing to do with Microsoft products. Jack (MVP-Networking).

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:58:29 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I do -- bloatware can affect system performance, and the amount of degradation can be significant.

I care about that too, but not to the exclusion of everything else. ;)

Sure, but that has nothing to do with the quality of programming, only with the user interface design, and is thus a bit of a cheap shot. :)

For what it's worth, my own assessment is that MS WZC is pretty well written, roughly a 4 on a scale of 5 (with a user interface score of 3).

While there are some manf wireless utilities that are better (e.g., IBM/Lenovo, Intel), there are others that are worse.

It might be if the entire package were loaded into memory and running all the time. It's my understanding that the bulk of the bloat for Windoze wireless drivers are client manager programs that are only run when one needs to make setting or configuration changes. I don't have Proset 10.x handy to verify, but out of the 86MByte compressed download, very little of it is running all time.

You mean bigger isn't better? Perhaps we might compare Intel Proset with the SUV purchasing decisions of the GUM (great unwashed masses). SUV's sell well. There's Nissan Titan pickup in the parking lot that looks and probably handles like the Titanic. The stock Windoze and applications installation on the latest Dell E310 that just arrives only gobbles 8.3GBytes on the hard disk. Well, bigger may not be better but it sure seems to be the current fashion.

It's also my favorite MS cheap shot. A good rhetorical question would be why MS hasn't bothered to fix such an obvious, irritating, stupid, and useless mis-feature. If anything, it's a not so subtle hint that MS knowns not what they're doing with wireless. However, to their credit, others have done worse. Netgear has somehow decided that the WPA encryption key needs to be buried under several layers of "advanced" menus where few users have been able to find it. WEP is right on the main page, but WPA is buried 2 layers deep. Wouldn't want to clutter up the screen with useful information and settings.

I would give the user interface a zero or possibly negative. Want a list of misplaced features, missing features, and user interface absurdities? Got any user diagnostics? Connection progress dialog? Encryption failure notification? Prefered SSID? Selection of access point by MAC address? Connect to any random access point? Takes forever to list available networks if there are more than about 20 available. Obnoxious warning about unsecured networks that can't be disabled. Signal strength is buried and S/N ratio is missing. Overly tenacious roaming. "Limited Access" with no explanation as to why. This is not my idea of quality software.

Agreed. There's always a way to make it worse.

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 01:29:23 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

That's not the only issue -- sluggishness can come from such things as initialization, size of working set, page faulting, swapping in and out, on demand loading, etc. My personal take is that Intel ProSet is actually sluggish (on my ThinkPad T-41 with 768 MB at least).

I know. It is pretty silly, but then nothing is perfect -- I can list silly things with just about any piece of software.

Probably because it's a minor issue and because fixes can have serious unintended consequences (new bugs, unexpected interactions, QA burden), not to mention the basic issue of massive documentation changes.

Only to a tiny audience. ;)

Then you must rate other products well into the red negative range. Is anything at all in your black? ;)

That reminded me. I promised to do some wireless benchmarking. I'll be sure to compare WZC with other client managers.

Sigh. The implication is that that the minor and easy to fix things will never get fixed. Kinda demonstrates my favorite axiom about software: Features and functions get added faster than bugs get fixed. At least it's fixed in Vista.

Right. How many times do you and I have to answer the same dumb question about why WZC says that the user is connected but there's no DHCP delivered IP address. (Because the WEP key ASCII to Hex conversion is broken). There's no diagnostics, no connection progress information, no useful status information, and no useful help. The 3 common methods of converting from ASCII to Hex for the WEP key are well known and documented:

would think that MS would simply have added it to their "try every combination of 64/128/ASCII/Hex key" feature. But, they didn't. Since MS had undoubtably run into the problem many times, but hasn't even bothed to generate a KB article on the problem, methinks there is more than just a tiny audience that's affected.

Nope. I hate them all. I have a very different way of handling complex user interface and configuration issues. Basically, I seperate the initial setup, the operational display, and the diagnostics in 3 seperate sections (instead of muddling them all together). MS software tends to be evolutionary, in that they start with an essentially good idea, and then patch it together with band-aids and false appendages until it sorta functions. A good example is what they did to Giant Software's Anti-Virus program. What was a perfectly functional and easy to use interface degenerated into an overly simplified and difficult to use MS update. I'm not sure where the problem is at MS. It seems to vary with department. With the exception of MS Outlook, the MS Office products have it together. Also, IE7 is quite good once MS, Mozilla, and Apple finished stealing from each other. However, in the wireless area, my never humble opinion of the features, functions, and user interface are very much in the red.

Happy Day of the Turkeys.

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 02:19:57 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I think the issue in this case is UI, not minor versus major.

Not short of a major update.

Serious bugs do tend to get fixed faster than adding features and functions -- just look at all the Microsoft updates.

Good, not that I'll be using Vista in the foreseeable future. :)

I agree that more than a tiny audience is affected -- my comment was about how many would see it discrediting MS. Most users tend to blame themselves first. MS is way down the list thanks to a still good public image..

I think it's more that MS, like most software companies, starts coding the core before the design is done, then tries to graft on a user interface later. Things tend to go much better when _all_ the spec and _all_ the documentation are completed _before_ any coding starts.

I agree MS made it worse, but I can understand why MS wanted to change it -- the average user really doesn't understand what to do with it, and the old interface was confusing to them.

Really? I think the default hiding of menu items is horrid! And the grouping of menu functions is anything but intuitive. All of which is why MS has greatly overhauled the interface in the new Office.

Yep -- I really like it.

Could be much better, but I still give it a C.

Not so happy for the turkeys. :)

How many other people are using your wireless? Both inhouse and in the neighborhood?

None, only one wireless network detected.

BTW, this problem of lag every minute doesn't occur when I formatted and installed Vista RTM version. A clean install using one the latest drivers from NetGear's website (however not installing their application as it doesn't work on Vista, just using the .inf & .sys files)

OK, I've discovered this problem of lag every 60 seconds is caused by VMWare (possibly the networking drivers it adds to the system).