Sticky Note above ' Windows XP SP2 users' --- question.

[richman107]

i see that in the sticky above it talks about how there is a hardcoded limit in XP SP2 for 10 connections... and it may cause some webpages to timeout or throttle if that limit is reached. I am presuming that since traffic is funneling through the proxy, having 30 people this could be hit quickly. i see the note was done a while ago, is this still the case or has windows updated that number? Also XP SP3 has been released as well.

i have had users state that some webpages timeout, but it isn't all the time, and a lot of the time it has to do with webpages that require a username/password to be entered (i.e. webmail, or banking sites, etc).

just curious if that sticky is still accurate and if anyone found any solutions if it is.

[adrien]

Hi

As far as I know, the limit is still in there.

You can tell if this is the case because Windows will log event log messages if this limit is hit.

The limit is on what they call half-open connections. These are connections that have been initiated, but not completed for some reason (e.g. the other end hasn't or won't respond, or some other intermediate network issue).

The action taken in such circumstances is to rate limit new connections.

The "justification" for this by MS was to protect us from malware that opens many connections. It also protects us from legitimate software as well though. So we've always considered this move on their part to be extremely misguided.

Anyway, as far as I know, the only fix for it is to patch TCPIP.sys or to move away from XP to a server OS (which they don't do this on).

Regards

Adrien

[richman107]

Yes we are using wingate on server 2003 OS. I thought you meant windows xp sp2 client machines.

thank you.