Internet connection

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard Fangnail
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Richard Fangnail

When you are using the Internet with Windows, does Windows
continuously send/receive something just so that it knows it's still
connected okay?

In other words, if I am doing nothing with the computer, Windows will
know if it suddenly loses the connection. How exactly did it know?

Thanks.
 
Richard Fangnail said:
When you are using the Internet with Windows, does Windows
continuously send/receive something just so that it knows it's still
connected okay?
Click to expand...

There may be a more sophisticated way to explain this, but here is my
version:
Windows must first receive 'bytes' in order to send any, which happens by
way of your 'connection' with the server. That connection can be
interrupted, apparently and in my case of dial-up it happens much too often,
especially when downloading something larger than 50 MB. I also discovered
that from midnight to morning interruption is almost non-existing.
In other words, if I am doing nothing with the computer, Windows will
know if it suddenly loses the connection. How exactly did it know?
Click to expand...

It wasn't receiving anymore bytes. Harry.
 
Richard Fangnail said:
When you are using the Internet with Windows, does Windows
continuously send/receive something just so that it knows it's still
connected okay?
Click to expand...
In other words, if I am doing nothing with the computer, Windows will
know if it suddenly loses the connection. How exactly did it know?
Click to expand...

I don't know for certain, but I think that this is what happens: the
networking hardware - the Ethernet or wireless hardware - knows when
it's receiving a signal from its port, and when there's nothing there.
It sends an interrupt to the CPU when this status changes, and the
interrupt handler reports the status change to you.

What I wonder about is the little globe on the networking icon in the
System Tray. The system figures out that it's on a network and
displays the networking icon, that's fine. But then it somehow figures
out that it's connected not just to a LAN but to the Internet and the
little globe appears on the icon. How does it know that? Surely
there's no difference in the signal being received by the Ethernet or
wireless hardware? Does it ping Microsoft?
 
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