Submitted by It’s panic time again, boys and girls, according to a ZDNet article. “Microsoft’s launch of Windows Vista could slow down or stall traffic on the Net, said Paul Mockapetris, who is widely credited with inventing the Internet’s Domain Name System. Mockapetris believes Vista’s introduction will cause a surge in DNS traffic because the operating system supports two versions of the Internet Protocol, a technology standard used to send information over computer networks.” Ars, however, says there’s no need to stockpile batteries and dehydrated food. “Relax, the Internet isn’t going anywhere. As it has so many times in the past, it will adapt to the new demands being placed on it. And it will remain true, as they used to say, that it’s always September somewhere on the Net.”
Well, I think that Vista net traffic can’t beat the net traffic of porn movies over the P2P.
But can we continue to get cheap, and more importantly /good/ service from our ISPs with spiraling bandwidth usage? How many ISPs have switched to packet shaping, ‘fair usage’ unlimited policies and longer contracts already? It is in the Internet’s best interests to use the network efficiently, even if that’s BrittenySpears.jpg or not.
They aren’t talking about bandwidth, they are saying that Vista will double the load on DNS servers, which are already running at close to capacity. This is just hype, though – as the load on the DNS servers increases, more will just be brought online to cope with it. Its not like everyone will be upgrading in 1 day – that might cause some problems.
There best efforts to destroy the information highway so far have failed, I see no reason for optimism on their part this time.
Vista is the first Windows version to support the new IP version 6,
I can’t even remember how long linux supports ipv6.One of the first things i disable,otherwise browsing the web with konqueror is a panacee.
Vista actually isn’t the first version of Windows to support IPv6. IPv6 first shipped with Windows 2000. It was mainly a research stack then, but was later updated. XP was the first version of Windows to ship with a fully supported IPv6 stack. The XP stacks were replaced in Vista with a rewritten, hybrid stack that supports both v4 and v6 instead of having seperate stacks for each protocol as in previous versions of Windows. The UI and in-box applications were also updated in Vista to natively support v6.
I mean come on….Microsoft Windows is ALREADY the biggest pig on the network.
Any network admin will tell you that the number of Windows systems on a network is the single biggest limiting facter as to how large a subnet can be due to the sheer amount of needless crap the SPEW onto the network.
There already is no more chatty,bandwith wasting OS in the world than Windows.
Hey buddy, newsflash– You have no idea what you’re talking about.
This is about the INTERNET, and any sysadmin worth his salt would filter/limit what traffic goes from his local network to the public one.
Well, if Windows Vista receives more updates than XP after its release it is going to make a dent on Internet traffic.
And while we are at it, does anyone know a good link describing how to have a local Windows Update like repository (like what we can do with Linux – yum, etc), or even if it is possible. I know we can use nLite to slipstream the packages for new installations (also to current ones) but I want a more practical and comfy way to easy external traffic.
It does exist, it’s WSUS (Windows Server Update Services):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updateservices/downloa…
In reality, is the DHCP server if IPv4, Vista does an IPv4 DNS query, not both.
This just the usual anti-Microsft FUD designed to rile up the OSS fanatics. You all should be ashamed for biting.
Edited 2006-09-08 15:19
“In reality, is the DHCP server if IPv4, Vista does an IPv4 DNS query, not both.”
Eh, not at all. DHCP have nothing to do with this.
When you have an IPv6 enabled interface that interface will always have an address, the link-local address. This address is automatically configured, part of the standards and exist wether you want it or not.
Of course, wether an application tries to lookup an AAAA (IPv6) address first or an A (IPv4) address is entirely up to the application. Simply having IPv6 enabled doesnt in itself cause any increase in the number of queries.
And even if it did, it’s not like it’s a herculean task to add some more boxes to already clustered/load-balanced DNS server farms.
“This just the usual anti-Microsft FUD designed to rile up the OSS fanatics.”
I don’t think Mockapetris is an OSS fanatic but in this case he fail to take into account that it’s not all that difficult (or costly) to just add more hardware to cope with the increased load (if there will be one).
So the answer to the question “Will Vista Stall Net Traffic, or Not?” is “No”.
I don’t think Mockapetris is an OSS fanatic but in this case he fail to take into account that it’s not all that difficult (or costly) to just add more hardware to cope with the increased load (if there will be one).
It’s not as easy to add horsepower to the root servers as you might think. True, it’s not a herculean task, but it’s not as easy as throwing another box in a rack down at the colo.
There are some interesting papers floating around about the scalability of the root name server set up.
Of particular interest is the hierarchical anycast system used by ISC’s F root server and how it manages the interaction among the servers spread over the 37 sites that compose the F server.
“It’s not as easy to add horsepower to the root servers as you might think.”
But the scenario at hand doesn’t primarily affect the root servers.
“Of particular interest is the hierarchical anycast system used by ISC’s F”
In Januari 2005 anycast was used by 6 of the root servers (i cant recall exactly which ones) and I’m sure this number hasn’t decreased since then.
It probably wouldn’t be such a big deal if DNS weren’t such a piece of crap. Obviously, it’s not Vista’s fault that DNS servers everywhere are “already running close to capacity”. How about fixing that before placing blame on a yet-to-be-seen threat such as Vista for being the straw that broke DNS’ back?
The current root DNS servers are way overpowered for the amount of traffic that they get. Maybe some local ISP’s DNS servers may suck, but for those who know, they use opendns. I use it at home because the Comcast DNS servers can be flakey at times.
http://opendns.com
IPv4 and IPv6.
So where is the catch ?
You forgot – the catch is this is the latest and greatest from Redmond – you know, the guys that don’t need any help from the outside world to write their O/S.
I’m still waiting for people to realize that it’s MS that’s trying to catch up to the rest of the world rather than the world being told by Redmond what they want.
[ edited for spelling ]
Edited 2006-09-08 15:57
“ I’m still waiting for people to realize that it’s MS that’s trying to catch up to the rest of the world rather than the world being told by Redmond what they want.”
Problem is that people simply don’t know that there’s a rest of the world, which is one of two reasons Windows is used by everyone and their mother. I’ll leave the second reason to the vivid imagination of y’all.
So has mac os for a couple of years now. The catch I think is that more people use Windows compared to unix derived OS’s.
But hey, who the hell is going to use Vista anyways
Tanks Flatline, looks like it is what I was looking for. I’m going to spend some time digging/digesting it.
This is not an issue. Anyone that does a little research and uses some common sense will understand that.
Oh, and XP supports IPv6 too, it was just disabled by default.
pro-Linux and anti-Windows zealot (not my description, and not one I agree with) says:
Look, this is just daft. The only way Windows will ever bring the Net to its knees is if they release it for free and let you download it, and EVERYONE WHO IS USING WINDOWS NOW, DOWNLOADS VISTA, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
So please, give it up already and if you must criticise it, then start criticising it where it hurts.
Edited 2006-09-08 17:00
actually, awhile back MS slowed the net to a crawl. I forget exactly what happened but it caused every networked windows machine to try connecting to their servers almost all at once… anyone remember this? im on my cellphone so I can’t quickly look it up.
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160×160
Some DNS servers may be heavily loaded, but most are not. Also, I don’t see why Vista would even do an IPv6 lookup if you don’t have a v6 address assigned.
Even if it does, it should not be a major problem. Some providers may be overutilized on their DNS servers, but this will just be justification to upgrade them a bit.
This is FUD froma DNS software company to increase sales of their own products. Nothing more.
– Kelson
Raw Sockets in Windows XP were supposed to bring the end of the world and it never happened.
More FUD pure and simple.
Paul Mockapetris, who knows his stuff, having been involved for more than 25 years, says “adding Vista’s ipv6 dns to the current workload of root name servers will slow things down because they’re running near capacitly.”
This is an accurate and not particularly alarmist statement.
So he’s being accused of ulterior motives and being condemned for alarmism. . .
Oh Noes Teh Sky Is Falling!!1!!
“adding Vista’s ipv6 dns to the current workload of root name servers will slow things down because they’re running near capacitly.”
Only Vista wont be adding much workload to the root servers since it wont query them, it will only add to the workload of the resolving cache’s of ISP’s.
Since they are cache’s they’ll naturally cache results and most people’s DNS queries wont result in hits to the root servers (since most people visit the same major sites).
Also mitigating the “mud slide” is the fact that Vista has it’s own DNS cache so it wont re-query the ISP servers all the time.
You do realize that Mockapetris took this into account when he made his comment, right?
“You do realize that Mockapetris took this into account when he made his comment, right?”
If he had he wouldn’t have made his comment the way he did.
http://lists.oarci.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2006-September/0010…
http://lists.oarci.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2006-September/0010…
Edited 2006-09-09 09:30
Neither of those posts demonstrate that Mockapetris didn’t take this into account, only that the authors believe as you do that he didn’t.
Anyway, this is a matter of informed speculation by people have a deep understanding of the problem domain that got out of hand when it hit the trade press. The only way we’ll know whose SWAG was right is to wait and see.
If the problem is no more than ISP DNS servers near the knee, the solution, as you say, is straightfoward. If the problem does extend to the root, which doesn’t seem likely, the solution is harder, but still, as you say, not herculean.
File this one alongside Bill’s “Nobody needs more than 640k”, Steves “Nobody needs a color monitor”, Linus’ “You don’t want a device driver model” and the endless Y2K hype.
Or better to say the steamheads who came onto the idea to introduce DNS for IPv6 where there is no need for!
8 Blocks, each 16 bits long. That means 16 Unicode characters.
abcdefghijklmnopq – so long can could a DNSv6 name be. No top-level domain frenzy, no registrars, just plain words.
And the most important thing: no need for DNS – works like the letters on telephone buttons. But we can save far more for one block. Every letter you type in is being replaced by the character code and the rest replaced by zeros. Once that has been done, voila, you have the IP address.
But as it looks like this “invention” is way too complicated compared to DNS and costs far more.
Ok, sure, USA loses its “power” over the Internet and the registrars have to look for a new model. And Microsoft would find a new model, too – if you don’t pay protection money, they will throw out DNS support and change to this system
Edited 2006-09-09 15:50
so may vista do it again ;/