Assumption by computername wrong in xp

[dasodaha2]

Hello,

Recently we've upgraded some user pc's from windows 98 to windows xp. Since then, the login/password java applet is always displayed for these users (which, like all others, should be assumed by computername). After they get to the internet with their login/password, their computername displayed in the activity window of the wingate server has some strange characters at the end.

It looks like a windows xp machine sends 'too much' characters when giving his computername to wingate in the dhcp process. To verify this, we've used a network sniffer.
There is indeed a difference in the way the hostname (dhcp option 12) is transmitted. For windows 98, there is a zero character included at the end of the computername, while windows xp pc's just give the computername without this zero character.

Is this a wingate issue (wrong interpretation without a zero character), or is windows xp behaving the wrong way by not sending this zero character?

Maybe the problem is not related to this, but this really looks suspicious...

For being complete, the wingate server is version 3.0.5 and runs under WinNT.

Thanks for any comments on this...

[adrien]

yep, I think you cracked the problem!
Good tracking!

I also am pretty sure we fixed this in a later release - v 3 is about 5 years old now! We haven't had issues of XP DHCP clients notified for a long time, and checking the code, we do now check the field length for the machine name... this certainly would have done what you describe if you were using assumptions by machine name.

Adrien