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Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet

Journal written by twitter (104583) and posted by samzenpus on Sun Sep 02, 2007 09:19 AM
from the no-net-for-you dept.
Lund, Sweden refuses to work around a Vista bug, so people who live there must choose between Vista and internet access. It's nice to see the right people being held accountable for a change.

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  • by Nero Nimbus (1104415) on Saturday September 01, @08:28AM (#20433153)
    Is if the city offered free Ubuntu CDs as "Windows Upgrades."
  • Their internet is b0rked?
    • Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ettlz (639203) on Sunday September 02, @09:29AM (#20441029)
      (http://ettlz.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 12 2006, @06:53PM)

      Their internet is b0rked?
      No, it's b0rk-b0rk-b0rked!
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:So... by rucs_hack (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @12:05PM
        • Re:So... by ettlz (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @01:47PM
      • Re:So... by Arceliar (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @12:54PM
        • Re:So... by ettlz (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @01:44PM
      • Re:So... by bev_tech_rob (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @03:32PM
    • Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)

      by geobeck (924637) on Sunday September 02, @12:21PM (#20443057)

      Their internet is b0rked?

      It was bitten by a m00se.

      [ Parent ]
      • Re:So... by Yvan256 (Score:2) Monday September 03, @12:51PM
    • Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jemtallon (1125407) on Sunday September 02, @01:01PM (#20443495)
      My company ran into this as well. We have 4000 wireless customers spread out on 20+ antennas (each with its own Cisco switch). We're a Microsoft partner so we contacted them about the problem right away.

      As I understood it, the bug was this: Vista will only accept broadcast replies to DHCP requests. Any multicast response is discarded for security reasons (!?). So their solution was to put a DHCP server on every level of our network (for us, one for every 200 users) or switch to a network that relayed the broadcasted replies (ie: hubs). They also told us it wasn't a bug so they wouldn't issue a patch to correct it. There was a KB article on the issue but when we had users call MS support and ask them to walk them through applying it, we got a bunch of angry calls back to us saying MS refused to help them with it. We also talked to Cisco a bit to see if they had any idea what we could do to relay the broadcast but they never got us a solution.

      So in the end, we told MS that we'd either need a better way to fix this or we'd just tell our users not to use Vista. They seemed okay with us telling users not to use it so we have. A few of our users still use Vista with a home router and that seems to work alright. Luckily, there aren't too many Vista users yet and when faced with the option of buying and configuring a router or buying and configuring Windows XP, they've decided on XP. So all in all, it wasn't that big of a deal.

      Jem Tallon
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:So... by MickDownUnder (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @04:52PM
        • Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02, @05:39PM (#20446009)
          I think you're missing the point.

          I work for a networking company and a few months ago I fixed our BootP relay to be able to handle this.

          If you read the DHCP RFC, you will discover that this broadcast packet is actually an optional part of the spec. Furthermore, it was designed for (at the time - circa 1993) LEGACY equipment that could not handle unicast responses.

          Ie, I ask for an IP address, and because I'm a crappy old piece of hardware that can't handle it, I want the DHCP server to reply to me with a broadcast reply telling me my IP address. Normally such responce is unicast to your MAC address and everyone is happy.

          Windows XP works fine and will accept a unicast reply. In Vista Microsoft had the brilliant idea that they should enable this flag by default - despite the fact that any modern computer should be able to handle a unicast reply - they could back in 1993 after all.

          So yes, the fault is precisely with Microsoft for enabling an unnecessary and OPTIONAL part of the DHCP protocol by default, causing untold problems that could simply be avoided if they stuck to the XP way of doing things.
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:So... by Askmum (Score:1) Monday September 03, @02:18AM
            • Re:So... by cloakable (Score:3) Monday September 03, @06:06AM
              • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:So... by I'm Don Giovanni (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @07:17PM
      • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @05:59PM
        • Re:So... by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @09:15PM
          • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Monday September 03, @03:16AM
            • Re:So... by phoenixwade (Score:2) Monday September 03, @10:18AM
              • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Monday September 03, @06:28PM
              • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Tuesday September 04, @04:08PM
                • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Tuesday September 04, @08:42PM
                  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
                • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
              • Re:So... by phoenixwade (Score:2) Wednesday September 05, @10:08PM
              • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
            • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:So... by jemtallon (Score:1) Monday September 03, @01:34AM
          • Re:So... by TheNetAvenger (Score:2) Monday September 03, @03:09AM
            • Re:So... by jemtallon (Score:1) Monday September 03, @10:27AM
      • Security reasons ... by Joseph_Daniel_Zukige (Score:1) Monday September 03, @03:55AM
      • Re:So... by hauntingthunder (Score:1) Monday September 03, @08:09AM
      • Re:So... by Almahtar (Score:2) Monday September 03, @11:04AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • router (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Sunday September 02, @09:26AM (#20440977)
    (http://www.shambala.net)
    Wouldn't using a router to connect to the internet bypass the bug?
    • Re:router by kalleboo (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @07:46PM
    • Re:router (Score:5, Informative)

      by Frol (52495) on Sunday September 02, @09:43AM (#20441203)
      (http://hupp.se/)
      The bug in Vista is that it sends somewhat broken DHCP requests that Lund Energi's DHCP server refuses to reply to. If you have a home router the DHCP server in the router would (propably) reply to the requests from Vista and other computers on your LAN. And the router sends correct DHCP requests to Lund Energi's server in order to get it's own public IP address.

      In short, having a home router would solve the problem.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:router (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hedwards (940851) on Sunday September 02, @09:55AM (#20441339)
        That makes sense. I think that the city is doing the right thing. Not because I hate vista, but because MS pushes out non standard implementations on a regular basis. For them to be allowed to keep doing stuff like this or their screwed up web browser would be a bad thing. They have pretty regularly indicated that they aren't willing to think of their end users, and so stuff like this happens. It really isn't the fault of anybody but MS that the implementation was wrong. What makes things cludgy is when there needs to be a couple of dozen compatibility options enabled so that broken software can communicate.

        Broken software being broken shouldn't be allowed on line wherever possible. I just wish we could keep the subset of windows users that haven't bothered to secure their computers completely offline. And if need be any other users.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:router (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Spazmania (174582) on Sunday September 02, @10:24AM (#20441673)
          (http://bill.herrin.us/)
          Broken software being broken shouldn't be allowed on line wherever possible.

          That would violate the robustness principle summed up in RFC 1122: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

          In this respect, both Microsoft and the city are in the wrong.
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:router by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @10:50AM
            • Re:router (Score:4, Informative)

              by Spazmania (174582) on Sunday September 02, @11:01AM (#20442103)
              (http://bill.herrin.us/)
              No buddy, you got that dead wrong. Quoting from RFC 760:

                  "In general, an implementation should be conservative
                  in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior. That
                  is, it should be careful to send well-formed datagrams, but should
                  accept any datagram that it can interpret (e.g., not object to
                  technical errors where the meaning is still clear)."
              [ Parent ]
              • Re:router by Fizzl (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @11:47AM
                • Re:router by Spazmania (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @12:10PM
                  • Re:router by AJWM (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @01:42PM
                  • Re:router by Fizzl (Score:2) Monday September 03, @09:31AM
                  • Re:router by Martin Blank (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @02:10PM
              • Re:router by marcello_dl (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @11:51AM
                • Re:router by Spazmania (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @12:00PM
                  • Re:router by fritsd (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @12:43PM
                  • Re:router (Score:4, Informative)

                    This particular option is designed to aid old implementations of TCP which can't receive unicast packets until they have received an IP address (which they dont have yet because DHCP hasnt given them one)...
                    Vista has a new TCP stack, it would be incredibly stupid to implement such an ancient bug, especially when all earlier versions of windows worked correctly.
                    Infact, the vista TCP stack does support receiving of unicast packets, and yet microsoft still chose to use the broadcast flag without reason. That's why this ridiculous behaviour can be turned off with a simple registry entry. The broadcast flag is intended for TCP stacks which _CANNOT_ support unicast, it is absoloutely incorrect to use it as the default on a stack which can support it.
                    The broadcast flag is only intended for compatibility with very old TCP stacks (i cant think of any which requires it, and it makes sense that this legacy functionality was intended to be removed when you weren't using any of these legacy systems.
                    So, did this swedish ISP have any reason to believe that people would be connecting ancient TCP stacks to their network? If not, it makes sense that they wouldn't support this legacy flag.
                    [ Parent ]
                  • Re:router by marcello_dl (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:57PM
                  • Re:router by hauntingthunder (Score:1) Monday September 03, @08:14AM
                  • Re:router by Vanders (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @01:02PM
                  • Re:router by Spazmania (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:28PM
                  • Re:router by Kadin2048 (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @03:24PM
                  • Re:router by MickDownUnder (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @05:47PM
                  • Re:router by Ash Vince (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @06:09PM
                  • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
              • Re:router by MickDownUnder (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @05:21PM
                • Re:router by Tanuki64 (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @05:37PM
                • Re:router by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @06:07PM
          • Re:router by MickDownUnder (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @05:15PM
            • Re:router (Score:4, Informative)

              It's actually a stupid issue with pretty much all parties faulty. After reading tons of posts which all confuse it all, I did RTFKBA and RTFRFC. From the RFC and the KB article, the following facts can be found:

              1. There is one flag in DHCP protocol, the "BROADCAST" flag. The "Clarifications to BOOTP (RFC 1542)" gives a nice description of it's purpose (referenced from DHCP RFC2131).

              2. Normally the server sends DHCP replies as unicast packets to a specific node.

              3. It is suggested there are TCP/IP implementations unable to receive such a unicast packet before they have been fully configured, in which case they should set "the flag" to request that the server sends it's reply as a broadcast instead. Server should honor such a request. I guess such an implementation would configure their local MAC (or equivalent?) at the same time with their IP level settings, which might be a sensible thing to do in a simplistic single family (IP-only) network stack, which was designed before anybody thought of "auto-configuration" things like DHCP.

              4. For some unknown reason, Vista sends DHCP requests with "the flag" set by default, even if it doesn't have said inability to receive unicast packets before being fully configured.

              5. A DHCP server should honor such a request, though from reading the discussion here, I futher conclude that for various reasons, maintainers of certain servers and/or networks are unwilling to support broadcast replies to DHCP requests. At least in case of centralized DHCP servers this seems a reasonable decision.

              Now, it's likely that MSFT has some purpose for setting the broadcast flag (other than pissing people up). So far this purpose is more or less a mystery to me. One possible reason I can immediately think of would be allowing a DHCP server to detect the presence of another DHCP server by monitoring DHCP reply broadcasts that somebody else sent (that could be useful for certain types of "zero-config" networking maybe?). But then again they might have another reason? Who knows.. maybe they wanna start selling DHCP relays? Or maybe they want Vista users to get static IPs?

              Anyway, it doesn't seem like anyone is breaking the letter of the standard, as the DHCP requests Vista's sending are technically valid (although the flag isn't set for the specific rationale it exists for), yet the servers/networks/whatever aren't really required to support the flag either (although they "should").
              [ Parent ]
          • Re:router by Raenex (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @10:58PM
          • Re:router by anandsr (Score:2) Monday September 03, @03:33AM
          • Re:router by kasperd (Score:1) Wednesday September 05, @01:39PM
          • Re:No, I don't think so. by Skrynesaver (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:21PM
          • Re:No, I don't think so. by noctrl (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @04:00PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:router by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @11:43AM
          • Re:router by rolfc (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @01:26PM
          • Re:router by Bert64 (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:44PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:router by mlts (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @10:39AM
        • Re:router by Delkster (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @11:46AM
        • Alexandrian solution by symbolset (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @01:34PM
        • Re:router by Bert64 (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:50PM
      • Re:router by Provocateur (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @11:02AM
      • Re:router by arth1 (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @12:25PM
      • Re:router by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @12:59PM
      • Re:router by arivanov (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @01:19PM
      • Re:router by AMSRay (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @04:53PM
      • Re:router by MickDownUnder (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @05:04PM
        • Re:router by WNight (Score:2) Monday September 03, @02:26AM
        • Re:router by CrossChris (Score:1) Monday September 03, @05:26AM
      • so it's not a bug after all! by davidwr (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @10:00AM
      • Brilliant :)) by Skrynesaver (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @02:26PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:router (Score:5, Funny)

      by Chris Mattern (191822) on Sunday September 02, @09:54AM (#20441323)

      A router just passes packets verbatim from one place to another verbatim


      I dearly, dearly hope you are not in charge of any network apparatus anywheres.

      Chris Mattern
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:router (Score:5, Informative)

      by toleraen (831634) on Sunday September 02, @10:06AM (#20441461)

      A hub just passes packets verbatim from one place to another verbatim...a router determines where the packet needs to go, determines what header/footer information needs to be changed, and rebuilds the packet for the next hop.
      Fixed that for you.
      [ Parent ]
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • "..between Vista and internet access."

    Fucking tricky one, eh?

    Like choosing between an anal probe and a cream bun.

  • Not their problem. by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @09:28AM
  • How's this funny again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wilson_6500 (896824) on Sunday September 02, @09:29AM (#20441031)
    If this happened in my town--and if I were using Vista--I'd be pretty damn unhappy. Usually a story is funny because someone got what they deserved in a particularly humorous way, or because someone subjectively considered evil takes it in the pants. Here I see a bunch of people getting shafted by two corporations that don't want to play nice, and this perhaps for the crime of simply owning a new computer.
  • Tests? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El Lobo (994537) on Sunday September 02, @09:30AM (#20441049)
    The university I work for in Sweden began testing with Vista when it was the called Longhorn. We discovered some bugs with the communication between Vista and some of our servers (running Solaris) back in 2004. The bug repports were submited to MS back then and the thing was fixed on the next Longhorn beta "release". It seems it's easier for some not to test and cry out like a baby when it's too late.
    • Re:Tests? by jb.hl.com (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @10:11AM
    • Re:Tests? by KnowledgeKeeper (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @10:49AM
      • Re:Tests? by El Lobo (Score:3) Sunday September 02, @10:51AM
        • Re:Tests? by fastest fascist (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @11:22AM
        • Re:Tests? by G3ckoG33k (Score:2) Sunday September 02, @11:39AM
        • Re:Tests? by KnowledgeKeeper (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @01:02PM
          • Re:Tests? by VisceralLogic (Score:1) Sunday September 02, @10:39PM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Vista DHCP client and Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yuna49 (905461) on Sunday September 02, @09:31AM (#20441063)