Barb, as previously mentioned I have already updated the router firmware to
the latest version with no improvement. I had also run the test you
mentioned a couple of months ago. I ran it again tonight and got the same
results, as posted below:
Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool
Test Completed.
Basic Internet Connectivity Test
This test is intended to ensure that your computer has basic Internet
connectivity, which is needed for the rest of the tests.
A result of "Supported" indicates that your computer has basic Internet
connectivity. Supported.
Network Address Translator Type
One primary function of most home Internet routers is Network Address
Translation (NAT). Routers providing NAT support assign private IP addresses
on the local network. NAT maps these private addresses on the inside network
to a public IP address on the outside network so that computers behind the
Internet router can communicate with the rest of the Internet. Since Network
Address Translators can work in different ways, this test uses Microsoft
servers to identify your router's NAT type. Some protocols work better
through routers that act as cone-type NATs than routers that act as
symmetric-type NATs.
A result of "Not supported" in this test does not impact your basic Internet
connectivity. One possible reason for this result may be that your computer
is connecting through an Internet router that acts as a symmetric NAT (view
the detailed report to determine if this is the case). Microsoft has
determined that symmetric NATs can block the traffic of programs that use
IPv6 tunneling over IPv4 (see Teredo Overview for details of how this works).
Failure to connect using IPv6 may cause these programs to not run or to have
a degraded experience. It is also possible that the servers used to determine
the NAT type are temporarily unreachable, in which case running the test
again later will give a more accurate result. Not supported.
Traffic Congestion Test
Internet routers sometimes lose information that is being transferred across
the Internet when they experience congestion (full router queues). This loss
of information is known as packet loss. Internet protocols like the Transport
Control Protocol (TCP) can use packet loss as a congestion indicator.
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) is a mechanism that provides routers
with an alternate method of communicating network congestion. This
notification effectively reduces TCP retransmissions and increases
throughput. This test attempts to download a short Web document, first with
ECN enabled and then again with ECN disabled. If both downloads succeed, the
test passes, which indicates that your Internet router successfully allows
packets through with ECN options set.
A result of "Supported" indicates that your router can work with this new
Vista Feature to improve download speeds and increase endpoint connection
reliability. Note You would need to explicitly enable ECN on Vista to take
advantage of this feature. Supported.
TCP High Performance Test
Window scaling is a Transport Control Protocol (TCP) option introduced for
addressing performance problems. Some Internet routers cause TCP data
transfers that use window scaling to fail, particularly when there's a
mismatch between the scales chosen by two computers transferring the data.
This test downloads a series of Web documents of increasing length until
either an incomplete download is encountered or all downloads succeed.
Success indicates that your router allows Windows Vista to negotiate the best
data transfer rate and help improve download speeds.
A result of "Supported" means that Windows Vista automatically uses window
scaling to negotiate the best/largest data transfer rate and help improve
download speeds. Supported.
UPnP Support Test
Many applications need to open ports (allow incoming traffic) through an
Internet router, particularly when both communicating endpoints are behind
different NATs. Modern routers allow hosts to create such open ports using
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). This test ensures that the router has UPnP
enabled, can support a reasonable number of open ports, and can maintain
these settings.
If this test does not succeed, experiences using certain programs may be
degraded. However, your basic Internet connectivity should not be affected.
Not supported.
Multiple Simultaneous Connection States Test
This test creates 80 concurrent TCP connections to external Web servers and
keeps them alive over the period of two minutes by attempting continuous data
download using HTTP. Passing this test indicates that your router robustly
supports multiple computers or programs accessing the Internet
simultaneously.
A result of "Supported" means that your Internet router can handle a large
number of simultaneous connections. This will enable you to connect to the
Internet reliably using multiple applications or multiple computers. Also,
your experience with applications that use multiple network streams (like
some file download/sharing programs) will be enhanced. Supported.
Congratulations! You have basic Internet connectivity and browsing, and your
Internet router should work just as well with Windows Vista as with your
current/previous operating system. However, some of the new Windows Vista
features are not currently supported by your router.
