Consistent packet loss with Vista

[Guest]

I was noticing odd disconnects running networked application on my laptop
since installing vista on it. After quite a bit of delving, what I'm seeing
is this.

I'm using ping as a way of checking for network connectiveity, it is a basic
but seemingly effective way of seeing how well I'm connected.

When I test my connection by pinging a known machine from vista I get a
pretty consistent 6-12% packet loss as reported by ping. It doesn't seem to
matter whether I use a wireless card or the builtin wired network card on the
laptop. Changing the cable doesn't change this result. Another machine on
the same cable gets 0% loss (it's running xp). Rebooting back to xp on the
original laptop gets 0% packet loss.

As far as I can tell, this is affecting two different network cards so I'm
hard pressed to think that it's a network card driver issue, but I've got no
clue how to pin this down. Right now my only solution is to switch back to
xp where this hardware suddenly works perfectly.

Any suggestions as to how I track this down?

BTW the machine is up to date as far as windowsupdate is concerned.

Thanks - Guy

 

[Kerry Brown]

Have you tested the router for Vista compatibility?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932134/en-us

 

[Guest]

Well my home router fails the UPnP test - not too surprising it's not exactly
brand new. I'll have to test my work routerlater.

However the test result says that this shouldn't affect basic internet
connectivity whatever that means, I'm not really sure that a 10%packet loss
on a basically idle network counts as unaffected.

If this is a normal response to using Vista on current hardware I'm going to
be very disapointed since most of the time I have no control over that sort
of hardware and I didn't upgrade my OS to downgrade my connectivity like that.

Guy

 

[Guest]

OK so a bit of mucking around later, I've enabled UPnP on my router and the
router test tool claims that my connection now passes muster.

Not that this has made any difference, I still get 10% or so ping packet
loss if I use Vista and 0% if I use XP.

Any suggestions?

Thanks - Guy

 

[Kerry Brown]

You could try turning off Receive Window Autotuning.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430

The article is about firewalls but the setting can cause problems if any
hardware on the network doesn't support it.

 

[Guest]

I'm afraid that that didn't do it either.

Not only that, but the command to re-enable the autotuning gives me this
error:

c:\> netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=enabled
The parameter is incorrect.

Apparently the msdn article is out of date, the correct command is:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Anyway, thanks for the help trying to work this one out, but still not there
yet.

Guy

 

[Kerry Brown]

I can't think of anything else to try.

 

[Guest]

Anyone else got any ideas? Am I really the only person to see such
consistent packet loss under Vista? (OK, that's a rhetorical question,
obviously if lots of others were seeing this it'd have been fixed ages ago).

Anyway, is there any sort of logging or trace that anyone can think of that
might help me track this down? I'd hate to just do a re-install in an attempt
to get the OS to work correctly.

Guy

 

[Kerry Brown]

Anyone else got any ideas? Am I really the only person to see such
consistent packet loss under Vista? (OK, that's a rhetorical question,
obviously if lots of others were seeing this it'd have been fixed ages
ago).

Anyway, is there any sort of logging or trace that anyone can think of
that
might help me track this down? I'd hate to just do a re-install in an
attempt
to get the OS to work correctly.

What motherboard? Is the LAN card onboard? Is there a BIOS update available?
You pretty much eliminated everything except the computer.

 

[Guest]

It's a Sony Vaio Sz160p so I'm guessing that it's some Sony motherboard.
This problem occurs with both the Intel PRO/wireless 3945ABG card and the
Marvell Yukon 88E8036 on board lan controller. I've not found any BIOS
updates for them yet. And again, XP works fine on this same hardware, I can
dual boot it and keep trying both. One works and the other doesn't.

I'll take another look for BIOS updates though, something might have shown
up, Sony don't make it particularly easy to find stuff in a timely manner to
be honest.

Guy

 

[Kerry Brown]

Did you try the latest drivers for the NICs?

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...2259&dwnldid=13001&agr=n&lang=eng&prdmap=2259

http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?dId=170&pId=39

Make sure you create a restore point before trying these drivers.

 

[Guest]

Guy,

I'm sorry you're experiencing issues. If you're still able to repro the
packet loss, are you willing to work with us to run some tracing and send us
the logs so we can check them out?

 

[Guest]

I have Internet connectivity for browsing and small file download, however
anything over 128 kb aprox incurs significant packet loss. I've used Network
Monitor 3 & MMC Reliability & Performance monitor to capture network traffic
& Vista performance counters. I am not able to look inside the ISO layers to
determine where the packet loss is happening. The packets are getting to the
PC but are being lost or rejected somewhere in the network stack.

Incoming packets sequences numbers and corresponding ACKs are all good for a
a short while then the required ACK for a packet is not issued. Shortly after
a ACK for the previous packet is reissued many times. This is unsuccessful
then a new request to re-start at a much earlier sequence number is
requested. This takes some time to sort out. File copy from a XP PC on the
local subnet also fails.

I was able to download up to 1 meg a second on my ADSL 2 net connection -
now I'm down to 80 kbs download & 800 kbs upload. As you can see I'm not
happy. I was OK until "around" 14th June - Microsoft updates automatically
applied.

I have installed hot fix Windows6.0-KB931770-x86 with no effect.

I have an xp pc on the same internet connection - it can receive OK.
Vista has the same behaviour with firewall on & off.
Outlook is able to download attachments OK, most around 100kb.
I have switched cables, network cards & PCI slots with no change to packet
loss in the Vista PC.

I can reproduce the issue.

Can anyone help me?

 

[Stanley Feng \(MSFT\)]

David,

Can you please contact me offline at "sfeng at microsoft dot com"? We are
interested in getting more details about your issue.

Thanks.
Stanley

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem as mentioned by Guy in the original post. I have
tested my router with Microsoft's router test and I pass everything fine
except the UPnP test, which I purposely have disabled in my router. So I am
fine there. My packet loss disappears for a little bit if I repair my
Internet connection. Disabling TCP autotuning doesnt seem to help. Lastly,
I am hardwired, so it is not a WiFi issue. I went into my XP partition to
see if I would get the same packet loss at regular intervals. The conclusion
was that I do NOT experience the same packet loss problem in my XP partition
with the same hardware. (A8N-E nforce4 ultra motherboard with built in nvidia
gigabit NIC).

I am not sure what else to do.