Internet is at crawl.

zappaDPJ · May 04, 2010, 19:37:30

Thanks Steve, I've been searching the net while waiting on the results of XP PRO which also doesn't appear to have any significant impact on network throughput when running multimedia applications. I found this in reference to the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service...

QuoteThis service has been implicated in poor networking performance while multimedia is playing. In response to this, Microsoft has included a configurable option in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and later where users can specify the network throttling index value for the Multimedia Class Scheduling Service so that network performance and audio/video playback quality can be balanced according to how users configure it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Class_Scheduler_Service

I think we've identified the culprit. I can't believe I've wasted two days of my life on this. I wonder how many other people thought they had broadband issues when in fact were having their network's soft underparts squeezed by Microsoft's ineptitude

Thanks again for your help on this Steve, you've certainly been instrumental in identifying the cause. Have another

Rik · May 04, 2010, 19:38:42

Glad you're getting there, Zap, it could be useful for us all.

Steve · May 04, 2010, 19:46:57

Thanks,I think its time to rid yourself of Vista. I purchased the Windows 7 upgrade family pack for the households Vista machines,did a clean install and money well spent in my opinion.

Edit: I suppose the proof would come from configuring the multimedia class scheduler service and then see if the issue goes away.

zappaDPJ · May 04, 2010, 21:45:34

That's certain one of my tasks for tomorrow Steve

zappaDPJ · May 05, 2010, 16:23:26

I've been playing around a bit and I can confirm the Multimedia Class Scheduling Service in Vista is having a huge and it seems accumulative effect on my network. It's always the one common denominator. I'll see what my friend has to say tonight as he's going to take another look at it.

Rik · May 05, 2010, 16:24:39

Good luck, Zap, I can see you moving to Unix yet.

zappaDPJ · May 06, 2010, 15:58:23

I'm probably more familiar with Unix than Windows so don't tempt me

Last night I effectively disabled the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service by giving the NetworkThrottlingIndex a value of (&)FFFFFFFF on all the PCs running Vista. The results of doing this were pretty obvious. The friend who help me sort this out is surprised that the problem was having such an impact on the traffic coming though my broadband connection. He also didn't seem too impressed with the way any of my Netgear routers were set up and changed some settings in one which he's suggested I replicate in the others. Most of the settings he changed were in the QoS, a bit of a grey area for me.

I've spent all day on the net testing out the changes and it's actually quite a revelation. No more 30 second+ lag spikes on comms services, websites are quick to fully resolve and I was able to watch two films at the same time on Sky Player/iPlayer without getting bandwidth warnings.

Sorted

Glenn · May 06, 2010, 16:01:54

Good news indeed

Steve · May 06, 2010, 16:06:35

Why did MS do that, no wonder Vista became unpopular and how many ISP support depts have suffered earache as a result.

Niall · May 06, 2010, 20:11:58

Quote from: zappaDPJ on May 06, 2010, 15:58:23
I'm probably more familiar with Unix than Windows so don't tempt me

Last night I effectively disabled the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service by giving the NetworkThrottlingIndex a value of (&)FFFFFFFF on all the PCs running Vista. The results of doing this were pretty obvious. The friend who help me sort this out is surprised that the problem was having such an impact on the traffic coming though my broadband connection. He also didn't seem too impressed with the way any of my Netgear routers were set up and changed some settings in one which he's suggested I replicate in the others. Most of the settings he changed were in the QoS, a bit of a grey area for me.

I've spent all day on the net testing out the changes and it's actually quite a revelation. No more 30 second+ lag spikes on comms services, websites are quick to fully resolve and I was able to watch two films at the same time on Sky Player/iPlayer without getting bandwidth warnings.

Sorted

I'd be interested to know what was changed, as I have a netgear router. Also, I've never had problems that you're describing and I'm using 64bit Vista.

zappaDPJ · May 07, 2010, 04:01:49

My PCs are all running 32 bit but I doubt that's a factor. The main thing to change would be as detailed in this page that Steve linked: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx