Jupiter Jones said:
Whether you control something is irrelevant.
It's highly relevant. Microsoft released something that is not to spec but
is supposed to be. In a typical month, I probably access two dozen routers,
only one of which I have any control over. What am I supposed to do about
those systems?
If there is a hardware fix and it is not applied, those making that
decision do so representing the users who may be handicapped or benefit by
that decision.
Or Microsoft could simply fix their buggy wireless implementation. It is
neither efficient nor logical to expect everyone else to comply with a
unilateral demand to support something off-spec and proprietary. I'd rather
see hardware vendors devote their resources to producing better hardware,
rather than spending money and time on kludging a fix to accomodate
Microsoft's errors. Wasting resources on making up for Microsoft's mistake
is ridiculous.
If there is something that can be done to the hardware and it is not, that
may be something the users of that hardware have to deal with.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. There is a reason for industry standards.
Microsoft, evidently, believes it gets to define its own standard. If so,
Microsoft is swimming upstream.
Few if any ISPs make their own hardware.
Instead they purchase from others.
The actual manufacturer and not the ISP is normally the best source for
information and updates.
You, like Microsoft, are taking a very narrow view of how people use their
computers. As an example, airline club rooms use whatever wifi service is
contracted by the airlines' IT departments. There may be multiple ISP
contracts, with multiple routers supplied. Do you really expect the airline
to track what hardware each ISP provided, contact each manufacturer,
ascertain whether or not a firmware upgrade is available, and then install
it? The problem is particularly exacerabted by the fact that only Vista
users (and not every Vista user) is going to encounter this bug. Given that
Microsoft denies the problem even exists, why would you expect it to be
reasonable for airline IT departments to even know about it? What do you
expect club room users to do when they are in a new city and need to check
their email NOW?
Multiply that by the number of people visiting client offices, staying in
hotels, etc. and then explain what all these people should do. Sorry, but
simply dismissing the problem Microsoft created as the responsibility of
those who control the routers is, to put it charitably, naive.
Assuming it is a Microsoft issue, you will need to wait for Microsoft.
How could it not be a Microsoft issue if the problem occurs with the
products of multiple manufacturers (including mainstream major manufacturers
like Netgear and Cisco/Linksys) and only with Vista?
However if it is a hardware issue or a combination Microsoft/hardware and
those responsible do little to maintain the hardware, then they also share
in the responsibility for problems caused for the users.
Except that it is not a hardware issue -- if it was, XP, 2000, 98 and 95
machines, not to mention Mac and Linux machines, would exhibit the same
problem. They don't. This is a Vista bug and, sadly, appears to be one of
those bugs that I think of as "waive a dead chicken in a bag" problem, i.e.
though my wifi connection (finally) appears relatively stable (though not as
stable as my XP machines), I have no way of knowing exactly which of the
various fixes and updates (both those related to Vista reliability and those
with no conceivable connection to the wifi bug) was responsible for fixing
the problem. Waiving the dead chicken in a bag has worked for me for the
time being. Who knows, though, whether the next fix will undo whatever
magic I have wrought up 'til now.
And, finally, I've yet to hear of anyone who has been able to fix this
problem with a router firmware upgrade. I don't doubt that there are old
routers out there that need a firmware update regardless, and I also don't
doubt that there are cheap off-brand routers out there that are out of spec.
However, these newsgroups have endless reports of people using the latest
firmware in the name-brand routers who continue to experience this problem
(and I'm one of them -- at home, I run a brand new Netgear with the latest
firmware upgrade, and still experience the "local only" bug with my Vista
Business-equipped laptop but not my XP laptop).
I repeat:
It does a tremendous disservice (and particularly to naive users seeking
assistance in these forums) to suggest "upgrade your router firmware" as a
first step in trying to solve the "local only" bug. The problem is not the
hardware. It is Vista. There are a number of software kludges, which I've
previously described, that can ameliorate the problem and those should be
tried first on any network that can support wireless reliably on non-Vista
systems.
