The Interocitor

WinXP SP2 breaks P2P?

Microsoft has released its long-awaited Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. This major update to Gate's flagship OS has a lot of good things to be said for it. Not only does it close any number of security holes in Windows and gives users more control over what Internet connections are allowed, but it also supports anti-virus hardware incorporated into the new AMD64 processors. Of course, one person's improvement can be another person's problem....

Two things have come up so far.

One is the limitation of 10 connections to any TCP/IP "port" (where "port" is a software term -- each particular Internet protocol is assigned a TCP "port" number. It's not to be confused with some spigot on the back of the computer). For the most part this is not a problem, and it does slow the spread of certain network viruses, like Sasser. But for peer-to-peer connections where files are cobbled together from pieces on 100 different machines (e.g. eMule), this is a major problem -- things crawl to a halt fairly quickly. While all kinds of arguments against P2P are possible, sneaking a kill into a major upgrade where users are encouraged to let Microsoft upgrade their machines automatically, is well, a little underhanded. Then again maybe no one at Microsoft realized the problem, but that's a bit hard to believe, especially when the limit is not alterable by the user even through the registry -- it's hardcoded.

The other problem is a bit less of an issue -- certain programs which attempt to execute code out of data areas, without letting Windows know they are doing so, will no longer work on some hardware. This is a fallout from the advanced virus protection, and can be fixed by patching the offending software, but it will annoy people for a while when their no-doubt-critical application stops working. Programs that require vast speed on repeated operations (e.g. graphics packages) are most likely to do this ("unrolling loops"). Fortunately, this feature can be turned off on a program-by-program basis.