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<DIV>Hi Nick/Michael,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>Why would it be a tinc issue, if no one else chimes in
to report the same problems?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't know if it is but based on my experience it's normally symptomatic
of the problem. Stable networks (mine is) don't usually cause problems like this
(in practice). It's possible of course but 3rd-party software is far more often
the cause (hence my suspicions but they're only suspicions at this point). I
don’t believe in maligning something without real proof however (I don’t work
that way) but based on my experience on these particular machines (I do a lot of
low-level development with many different tools), there are no other networking
problems normally.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>- You have not specified the router’s brand. Is it a
cheapo thing that was provided with your Internet connection (like mine: a
Fritz.Box with a lousy DNS cache for one)?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>- Does the router properly handle long running
connections like remote logins? Do a remote desktop connection to another
machine on your LAN and see whether that is still around after 2 days. I bet it
isn’t.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It's a decent quality router that’s been running without issues for years.
I keep Remote Desktop running for days on end and also use TeamViewer to access
the home version of Windows (which supports Remote Desktop <EM>client</EM>
only). Both programs stay up indefinitely.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>- You have not specified the router’s brand. Is it a
cheapo thing that was provided with your Internet connection (like mine: a
Fritz.Box with a lousy DNS cache for one)?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm not an authority on routers and exactly what active states they
maintain (other than any obvious ones), but their main function is to forward
packets to the target machines of course. They normally do this without issue,
otherwise problems would be quickly noticed. IOW, stable hardware just shouldn't
go down and stay down normally. It's the target servers (software) they
communicate with that are far more often the problem (not necessarily in this
case but usually). Even if something went down in the router (some cache cleared
or whatever), it won’t normally be a blocking problem, especially after being
rebooted (which isn’t even necessary usually). The servers talking to it (or
rather through it) can normally reinitiate communication without issue. If this
doesn’t happen then my first suspicion (after doing a cursory hardware check) is
to look at the software package itself. In practice it will usually be the
guilty party.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>- Have you considered the switches in the path? I have
seen weird stuff caused by switches going haywire once in a while and dropping
almost all the traffic.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>- If you are doing long running TCP connections over a
tunnel that is running on TCP for some reason, your connection could at some
point get stalled because of MTU problems. Example: If your client is behind a
NAT and normally downloads stuff, but occasionally uploads large amounts, you
could stall that connection easily if the MTU on the client is too high (it
sends a packet that is too large, but does not get notified because of NAT
dropping the ICMP packet).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>I will be investigating all this. Thanks.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>>> Why would three different versions of Windows
behave different with respect to networking?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>><FONT color=#0000ff>May I point at a printer spooler locking a document
and refusing to delete it, which has been a pain since Windows 95 right through
to Windows 7 and perhaps later?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I agree there may be some lingering issues (unfortunately I’m all too
familiar with Windows spooling lockups), but for the most part things work
(usually). Network stability problems aren’t normal in Windows (people would be
screaming bloody murder about it), and even if there were an issue, it’s highly
unlikely the same problem would be manifesting itself on 3 normally stable
machines (in the course of a couple of days).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>The simplest solution is usually the right one. Write
down your assumptions and prove them wrong. If you fail you are probably
right.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Agreed. And I will have to pursue this further to pinpoint what’s wrong.
Again, I don’t want to unfairly denigrate tinc. It may not be the cause and it’s
also a free package, which I certainly appreciate (kudos to the authors). My
instincts might be wrong IOW, but they’re based on:</DIV>
<OL>
<LI>25 years of Windows programming experience (with a deep understanding of
the Windows API). There’s just a “feel” for these things, especially after
having done a superficial review of things (a deeper review to now follow)
<LI>A complete lack any of other networking problems in my environment
<LI>The assumption that a package like “tinc” would work out-of-the-box based
on the default setup (without further tweaking). The environment can
potentially play a role of course, but if other settings do need adjusting
then it “appears” to be brittle, which I wouldn’t normally expect (since the
defaults typically just work in most packages)
<LI>Most programs in the real world are poorly written (just a reality) so
it’s guilt by association. That’s not fair of course, so I’m open-minded about
it (I haven’t looked at the “tinc” code) but right or wrong, I’m conditioned
to assume the worst, since it’s usually the case (no disrespect intended to
the authors though - it’s a reflection of past experience only, since their
own work could be a paragon of excellence but that would be rare in the real
world)</LI></OL>
<DIV>The upshot is that it just doesn’t pass the smell test which is why I’m
suspicious of the package itself at this point. I hope to be proved wrong
however and will happily acknowledge it. Thanks
again.</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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