Thank you for the referrals. We have read most of them, but find that the
subject is getting a little more technical than we are comfortable with and
often refer to versions of Windows other than Windows Vista.
FIRST, we find no definition of MTU, so what does it stand for?
SECOND, changing the MTU settings gets a little technical and requires
registry modifications. Can changing the MTU setting have some seriously
adverse consequences or is it a relatively benign setting?
THIRD, it sounds as if the user has to tweak the MTU setting by trial and
error. Is that true, or is there a standard one-size-fits-all setting for
Windows Vista that we can simply check for and be sure the setting is
correct?
We apologize for our novice status, but only pursue this course out of
necessity. We cannot understand why Microsoft features are so unreliable
and so incredibly difficult to troubleshoot and support. It seems like
standard features of this nature should all work reasonably well with very
little maintenance overhead. Unfortunately, they never do.
Richard,
a few thoughts. MTU is the Maximum Transmission Unit, the
maximum length of an IP packet. The standard figure is around
1,500 bytes, but there are quite a few details, several layers
of headers, etc., which makes the issue a bit convoluted. A very
safe, conservative, but a little less than perfectly efficient
figure would be 1,400 bytes. I would call that a benign setting,
certainly suitable for a test.
The problem is that it may be something else, and your MTU
settings may be perfectly allright.
Now for the more philosophical question. Microsoft is in the
market to make money. The combination of little competition,
very tolerant, often clueless buyers, and over-enthusiastic,
young, inexperienced programmers leads to a product with many
unreliable functions.
I'm sure that almost all of these functions work in the lab and
out of the box, but as soon as the computer gets years of
real-world use and third-party software installed, some Windows
functions become unreliable. We all know this. Something works
for a long time, but suddenly stops working.
Sometimes an expert can manage to find the cause and repair the
function, sometimes he can't. In the latter case your best bet
is to install yet another third-party program. In your
particular case I would propose first to try UltraVNC or perhaps
RealVNC, and there are several other programs that would also
fit the bill.
Hans-Georg
