Windows Core Networking : Rally

Windows Rally Demo'd at WinHEC

wndpteam — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:52:00 GMT

I noticed that there was a demo of Rally technologies at the WinHEC keynote the other day, so I created a link to part of the keynote with the Rally demo. Enjoy.

-- Ari Pernick

The Importance of 5GHz Operation for Video

wndpteam — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Recently, I read a great article on ZDNet that discusses the challenges IEEE 802.11n faces with 2.4GHz operation. The article is appropriately titled The Consequences of Abandoning the 5GHz Frontier, and discusses some history, backward compatibility, and interference. The important takeaway from this article is if you want a premium experience of video and other Windows Vista scenarios, especially Xbox 360 and Media Center Extender, look for the Certified for Windows Vista logo when purchasing consumer network equipment:

I posted a comment on this article that provides a little more information, which can be found here: http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10533-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=29474&messageID=559062

-- Gabe Frost

Wireless Routers That Rock: First Works With Vista Router

wndpteam — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to D-Link (powered by Ubicom) for being the first ever to acheive a Windows Vista logo for the DIR-655 wireless router. While Buffalo acheived the premium "Certified for Windows Vista" logo, D-Link was first to meet the baseline "Works with Windows Vista" requirements (months ago). What's the difference between the two you ask? First, the requirements for "works with" certification include: QoS, LLTD for rich Network Maps, WCN, Xbox Live, and more. Our baseline suite of tests ensure these devices are extremely robust. To put things in perspective, the *massive* majority of existing consumer networking products *do not* meet the baseline requirements! Remember, our goal is to transform the consumer networking ecosystem, and these devices do.

The requirement differences between the premium logo and baseline are: IPv6 and concurrent dual-band (2.4 & 5 GHz operation); which are huge feats. premium routers must meet all the baseline requirements in addition to the others. Essentially, the premium class routers are for video (both standard-definiton & high-definition) scenarios, and the baseline routers are for everything else.

I'll keep everyone updated on the new devices that acheive the logo. More to talk about very soon...

-- Gabe Frost

Wireless Routers That Rock: First Certified For Vista Router

wndpteam — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:47:00 GMT

Congratulations to Buffalo for being the first to acheive a Certified for Windows Vista logo for their dual-band WZR-AG300NH wireless router.

In short, this device passed over eight hours worth of rigerous testing designed to ensure a fantastic experience of Windows Vista scenarios; including HD video streaming from Media Center to Media Center Extenders over wireless! Many folks within core networking worked very hard to create meaningful tests that raise the bar of the consumer networking ecosystem. Certified for Vista wireless routers fully (and correctly) implement: network QoS for differentiating voice/video/best-effort/background traffic, LLTD for producing a rich Network Map, Windows Connect Now for super simple secure setup and adding new devices, IPv6, etc. Glenn Ward on the Windows Rally team, who is responsible for the router logo program, says it best in his email response to Buffalo receiving this honor:

"On behalf of all of us at Microsoft, please accept our congratulations and warmest thanks. Incredible engineering, effort, and determination went into making this happen - outstanding job to all at Buffalo, as well as the internal team who likewise worked tirelessly."

Well said Glenn, thanks for all the hard work!

-- Gabe Frost

Windows Vista Networking Goodies, Part 2: Device & Service Discovery

wndpteam — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:34:00 GMT

In my first post of this series, I talked about Windows Connect Now (WCN) and how easy it is in Windows Vista to discover, configure, and securely connect devices to a wireless network. In this post, I’ll talk about how to discover PCs, devices, and services that are available on the network. In Windows XP, if you wanted to find other PCs (and a limited number of devices) on your network, you went to Network Neighborhood. This interface basically listed all network PCs and, if you enabled Universal Plug-n-Play (UPnP), a small subset of UPnP capable devices such as your router. It’s never a wonderful day in the neighborhood though because the best you can do here is see other networked PCs and browse their file shares. While UPnP eventually provided more service descriptions, those capabilities were not finalized until well after XP shipped, and were almost always disabled by default in devices such as routers and APs. Network Neighborhood doesn’t provide any clear indication of what you can do with a particular PC or device, so we did a bunch of work in Vista to improve.

Windows Vista drastically improves this story by supporting a new concept called function discovery. In Vista’s Network Explorer (the replacement to XP’s Network Neighborhood), devices are discovered using function discovery. Function discovery can find devices using much more efficient, diverse and robust protocols than were available in XP’s Network Neighborhood. These protocols include NetBios, UPnP/SSDP, and Web Services Discovery (WSD). Further, additional providers can be added via a flexible function discovery platform, which means software developers can plug their own discovery methods in for a consistent user experience through the Network Explorer. So how does this relate to Network Neighborhood? In Vista, you can access the Network Explorer by clicking Start\Network. The value of improved function discovery is experienced here. PCs, devices, and their respective services are displayed here in all their glory. In addition to the out-of-box high-resolution icons Vista provides for various device classes, Windows shell extensions can be defined (by the device maker, not the end user) for custom icons and actions (when you right-click or double-click the device). And, network connected devices requiring a device driver can be installed directly from the Network Explorer following a simple plug and play process (the same experience as installing a directly attached peripheral).

In the above snapshot of my Network folder, you’ll see PCs, a network projector, a media sharing service (pictures, music, video), and an un-configured device. In my next post, I’ll talk about IP as just another bus via the PnP-X framework, and how the experience of discovery, installation, and use of network devices is the same as directly attached peripherals. Stay tuned.

-- Gabe Frost

Windows Vista Networking Goodies, Part 1: Windows Connect Now

wndpteam — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:53:00 GMT

In addition to a completely re-written core networking stack, Windows Vista makes networking a significantly easier proposition for home, small business, and enterprise users. In this multi-part series, I’ll describe some new features which greatly simplify the experience of connecting to and configuring new wireless networks, discovering devices and services on the network, and finally experiencing the desired end-to-end scenario (such as viewing pictures from a network PC, streaming audio or video, simple file sharing, etc.). In this first part, I’ll talk about Windows Connect Now (WCN).

WCN is compliant with the WiFi Alliance WiFi Protected Setup protocol, and is purposed at simplifying the setup of new wireless networks and then getting PCs and devices connected to that network. For Vista general availability, a PC connected via Ethernet to a Vista logo’d wireless router (or any wireless router that implements WiFi Protected Setup) is able to discover and configure the un-configured wireless router. Hopefully in a subsequent service pack, Vista will have the ability to configure an un-configured wireless router wirelessly. Once you unbox your shiny new wireless router and wire it to the Vista PC, go to Start\Network, where you’ll see an icon for the wireless router (in this case a Buffalo Airstation which I’ve been testing). Double-click this icon to start the configuration process.

These fancy new routers have a pin number on them somewhere (usually a sticker on the bottom). The first wizard page will ask you for this pin number as a security mechanism – you don’t want your neighbor configuring your network before you do.

After entering the pin and clicking next, you can either choose to use a wireless profile you’ve already setup (e.g. if you are replacing an old unit), or setup a new wireless profile (which I’ve chosen to do). This entire process in its simplest form is as simple as three clicks!

Creating a new wireless profile is super easy; especially if you just accept all the defaults. Importantly, configuring a wireless network via WCN is secure by default!

Now that your secure wireless network is setup, you can add additional PCs and devices just as easily. From Start\Network, click the “Add a Wireless Device” button.

Any un-configured wireless devices that support WiFi Protected Setup will be discovered here, but unfortunately, not Vista or XP PCs (hopefully this support will be added in a subsequent release). Select any of these devices, then your newly created profile, and the device will be automatically associated to the network. There are also many devices which support the USB version of WCN, such as the Xbox 360, Vista, and XP PCs. In this same screen, you can insert a USB key and push the newly created network profile onto it, then insert the USB key into any supporting PC or device to add it to the network. I love the idea of setting up an entire wireless network and associating all my PCs and devices without having to remember any of the settings; I’m sure you will too. Try it out and let me know what you think!

-- Gabe Frost

LLTD is Available for Non-Windows Platforms

wndpteam — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:52:00 GMT

Exciting news; the Windows Rally Development Kit was publicly released today on the Windows Rally technologies website! This porting kit is royalty free and provides full source code for an embedded Linux (yes, you read that correctly) reference implementation. Although Linux was used as a reference, this code is designed for easy porting to other platforms, which has been demonstrated by a number of vendors already. The footprint is very small (less-than 50KB), and targeted for embedded devices such as network routers, access points, NAS, PVRs, media players, etc. As I mentioned previously, not only will your device (with custom icon and attributes) show up in the Windows Vista network map, a qWAVE enabled application can do real-time bandwidth estimation, congestion detection, etc. for adaptive network streaming/transfers. Let the downloads begin!

-- Gabe Frost

How to Enable the Windows Vista Network Map

wndpteam — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:00:00 GMT

As Gabe mentioned in his blog post titled “Xbox 360 Fall Update Includes LLTD,” the Xbox 360 now includes the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol. At a basic function level, LLTD gives users a graphical representation of their home network topology. In addition to the network map, LLTD offers network device manufacturers a standard way of ensuring that their devices are easily viewed and accessible to their users. Windows Vista enables the Network Map by default when a user is in a location designated as “Home.” However, LLTD and, therefore, the Network Map are both disabled by default in “Work” and “Public” locations. Check out this Cable Guy article for more information on Network Location Types in Windows Vista.

You will receive a message inside the Network Map (Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center -> Network Map) if the map is disabled. As long as your network policy (group policy) does not prohibit it, enabling the Network Map on a local machine is simply a matter of enabling the right setting in the local computer policy.

“Network mapping is disabled by default on domain networks. Your network administrator can use Group Policy to enable mapping.”

The first step in locally enabling the network map is to run the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) as an administrator on the local machine. With User Account Control (UAC) enabled, just right-click “Command Prompt” (Start Menu->All Programs->Accessories) and select “Run as administrator” to open an elevated command prompt. From the elevated command prompt, run the command “gpedit.msc” (no quotes). This will start the group policy editor for the local machine.

Inside of the Group Policy Object Editor, navigate the tree to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> Link-Layer Topology Discovery.

Once you are in the Link-Layer Topology Discovery section of the editor, simply Right-click and open properties for “Turn on Mapper I/O (LLTDIO) driver” and enable the “Allow operation while in domain” option.

You should now be able to see your network mapped out in all of its graphical glory! If you would also like to use the network map on a public network, you can enable the “Allow operation while in public network” option. Network domain administrators who want to enable the Network Map across a group of machines should follow these same instructions and, additionally, link the policy to the desired Active Directory container.

I would be remiss if I did not touch on the “Turn on Responder (RSPNDR) driver” option that sits just below the LLTDIO option in the UI. The LLTD Responder driver allows PCs and network devices, like the Xbox 360, to present device details to the network such as the device’s manufacturer, model #, configuration URL, etc.

Beyond offering users the convenience of having a visual representation and providing right-click access to information about the devices, the LLTD Responder also plays an important role in responding to, and taking part in, network diagnostics. LLTD helps to make distributed and coordinated network diagnostics possible, and if you are creating home network devices, you should strongly consider implementing an LLTD responder. I use the word implement loosely here, because, very soon we will make an LLTD porting kit generally available that gives you everything that you need to incorporate LLTD into your devices. More information on LLTD, including the LLTD QoS Extensions, is available on the Windows Rally site. We will announce the general availability of the LLTD porting kit here on our blog.

-Billy Anders

Xbox 360 Fall Update Includes LLTD

wndpteam — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:49:00 GMT

There has been a lot of buzz about the recent fall update for the Xbox 360; however, an important new feature which has not been mentioned is support for the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol. In its basic form, LLTD allows a Windows Vista PC to accurately map the topology of your home network. In short, this map is a rich diagnostic tool designed to be a visual replacement for command-line ping (and I suppose arp). LLTD Mapper (component which initiates probes and draws the map) heuristics are able to ascertain what types of network elements (which may or may not implement the LLTD Responder) are interconnecting PC/devices that implement the LLTD Responder (component which responds to probe requests). If a PC/device implements the Responder, rich information such as: custom icon, IPv4/IPv6 address, MAC address, configuration URL, etc. is visible within the map. Below is a map of my home network, which now shows the Xbox 360!

The LLTD Responder component will be available for Windows XP some time in the near future so XP machines will also show up in the Vista map. There is a great deal of improvement that can go into the network map; and folks within networking are actively planning for these improvements. So what about QoS you ask? As Mathias previously mentioned, qWAVE APIs require that the destination host support LLTD to do real-time bandwidth estimation, etc. So, in addition to enabling a visual map of your home network, LLTD enables a device to support adaptive AV streaming via qWAVE support. Media Center on Vista is a great example of a qWAVE enabled application that does real-time adaptive streaming to the Xbox 360 (and other Pika devices) that support LLTD.

What would you like to see the network map support?

-- Gabe Frost

How to find consumer network gear that rocks: part 2 (QoS)

wndpteam — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 02:06:00 GMT

The “Certified for Windows Vista” logo is comprised of requirements for myriad networking features and scenarios, one of which being network Quality of Service (QoS). What is QoS and why is it important you ask? QoS is an overloaded term, but in short, it is a capability which enables priority handling of differentiated traffic such as voice, video, and typical web surfing. Mathias did a good job describing QoS at a high level in his post about QoS fundamentals. QoS is becoming increasingly important for no-new-wires home networks like wireless because they are shared network mediums. A shared network means that all hosts connected to the network share the available bandwidth as equally as possible. If your wireless network has 16Mbps available, that means total – each device shares that 16Mbps. Each device does not get its own dedicated 16Mbps. In a network where each device shares the available bandwidth, it’s important to differentiate the more important traffic so it receives priority; otherwise your large Internet download or multi-megapixel photo upload may cause your video stream to glitch. Nobody likes a poor experience; especially our families and significant others who don’t know (and shouldn’t have to know) how to fix the problem. A router reboot should never be an acceptable answer.

In order to enable this differentiation, your wireless router has to support QoS. The logo requirements not only ensure that products support QoS, but that common implementation bugs which break connectivity or hinder performance are not present. Each QoS requirement is validated using both TCP and UDP, and from both wireless-to-wired and wired-to-wireless directions (there are currently no requirements for traffic destined for the Internet). Without going into great detail, the QoS requirements ensure:

End-to-end connectivity is never broken because layer-2 802.1p tags are added to traffic
Traffic priority (indicated by DSCP or 802.1p) is never unexpectedly modified by network devices
Traffic differentiation via the WMM function actually works for each WMM priority, i.e. higher priority traffic receives a greater share (1.5x throughput of a concurrent lower priority stream) of the shared available bandwidth
During network congestion (regardless of concurrent priority traffic), voice traffic is never interrupted

We also ensure a high expectation of network hygiene by validating bridge function behavior, e.g. round trip time (RTT) for packets in congested and non-congested situations is sane, and that available bandwidth estimates do not vary beyond reasonable thresholds.

Devices that carry this logo will work great for your digital home scenarios. For example, both Windows Media Player (library sharing) and Windows Media Center streaming to Xbox 360 in Windows Vista make use of QoS if your network supports it; ensuring a great experience.

:: Gabe Frost

How to find consumer network gear that rocks

wndpteam — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 18:00:00 GMT

Over the past few years, we've seen consumer networking products get really cheap. While cheap in a currency sense is great, we're unfortunately left experiencing the same of product quality (usually while grimacing at the "getting started" manual). Consumer networking gear has been on a race to the bottom. Okay, maybe that sounds a bit harsh, but read on and I'll try to clear up what I mean and what the core networking team in Windows is doing about it.

As with most software, age becomes apparent as new usage scenarios arise. when you made that $35 wireless router purchase, your goal was probably living room web surfing from the new laptop without stringing a wire across the room. Many millions around the world had this same goal, and both network equipment providers (NEPs) and retail heard the calling. Products were built to address your scenario and all the hardware and software ~~shortcuts~~ cuts were made to meet a critical mass price point. This race to the bottom by all NEPs is evident by the considerable retail shelving space occupied by these products.

It took a few years to reach such a critical mass; however, as fate would have it, during this maturation phase new usage scenarios surfaced that exercise severe weaknesses in the many cheap networking products. Windows Vista is a prime example given the next-generation networking stack and focus on digital media experiences (such as live and recorded streaming of HDTV) through Media Center and Media Center Extenders including Xbox 360. Windows Vista unlocks many new experiences that cheap consumer networking gear degrades or sometimes completely inhibits.

A need existed to drastically improve the consumer network equipment ecosystem to ensure premium Vista scenarios are enabled as effortlessly as living room web surfing. This significant effort by many teams within core Windows networking, Xbox, and eHome (who bring you Media Center & Media Center Extender) resulted in a Certified for Windows Vista logo that is backed by strict requirements and a full suite of validation tests to ensure the highest product quality.

Considering that network QoS is dear to my heart, in the next few days I'll post about how we test these premium products for QoS support. In the mean time, you'll get a head start by reading this whitepaper from the Windows Rally website which details (at a high level) the requirements for receiving a Certified for Windows Vista logo.

This effort represents much more than a marketing spin (otherwise I wouldn't be so energized by it). If you are looking for consumer network gear that rocks, make sure the product sports this logo.

I'm eager to hear what you think and to answer any questions you have.

- Gabe Frost

Enabling Diagnostics for Network Performance Tuning

wndpteam — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 04:38:00 GMT

In Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions, Media Center will be available to all. Xbox 360 has integrated Media Center Extender (MCX) functionality, and a lineup of additional MCX devices will be comming soon from a number of partners, making it simple to extend TV (standard and high definition), videos, music, pictures, and rich web content (via Online Spotlight), from your Windows Vista PC to every television in the home; wired or wirelessly. The latter of connectivity methods (wireless) poses a number of headaches for consumers; especially 802.11g which operates in the 2.4GHz spectrum. Given that Media Center and myriad Media Center Extenders will be easily attainable when Vista releases, the core networking team has invested heavily in diagnostics to ensure users can take action whenever possible. The top issues impacting audio/video (AV) streaming over wireless networks are exposed through the Network Performance Tuner, which is integral to the MCX experience.

I previously blogged about connecting your digital home, where I discussed a number (not all) of common problems faced when using WiFi to connect media extenders, but didn't go into any detail about what is technically required from vendors to enable diagnosing these situations such that users can take action. During WinHEC this year, I'll be doing a session that clearly highlights each of these top issues, the impact to users, and what vendors must support in their access points and NIC drivers to ensure diagnosability. This session will be a lot of fun, so I look forward to seeing everyone. Additionally, Mathias Jourdain (who has blogged a number of times about QoS topics) and I will be joining a number of folks from the core networking team in an "Ask the Experts" session to dive deep on any questions you have related to QoS and Windows Networking in general.

- Gabe Frost