Networks

[David Kelsey]

I know this is strictly not the right place to ask this, but does anyone
know why Microsoft seem to give us so much trouble in setting up a network?
Is there some overwhelming issue that prevents this task being just a matter
of a few mouse clicks? I have never seen so many similar problems in one
newsgroup before, not since the days of SP1. Doesn't this indicate a
distinct failure in programming skills by the huge brains at MS? At the end
of the day, people sort out the problems in the field, so why can't our
computers sort them out for us?

David Kelsey

 

[Malke]

I know this is strictly not the right place to ask this, but does
anyone know why Microsoft seem to give us so much trouble in setting
up a network? Is there some overwhelming issue that prevents this task
being just a matter
of a few mouse clicks? I have never seen so many similar problems in
one
newsgroup before, not since the days of SP1. Doesn't this indicate a
distinct failure in programming skills by the huge brains at MS? At
the end of the day, people sort out the problems in the field, so why
can't our computers sort them out for us?

David Kelsey

You have to remember that this is a tech support newsgroup and so you
aren't seeing posts about how great someone's computer works. If you go
to a hospital, you'll see a lot of sick people. Does that mean
everybody in town is sick?

I can't answer your question about why it isn't more brain-dead-easy to
set up networking in XP because I'm not a programmer and I don't work
for Microsoft. However, I can tell you that it isn't that hard to do
either, although many people seem to think computers should be as easy
to operate as toasters. Computers are marketed like that, but it isn't
true. Computers are complex and powerful machines that require a little
more knowledge to use than is required to toast bread.

Are you having a problem you'd like help with or are you just venting?

Malke

 

[David Kelsey]

I did have a problem with setting up a USB2 VPN, but no-one in this group
had had any experience with this, so I struggled with trial and error until
eventually I have a two-computer network that works, albeit rather slowly
sometimes. The point I am making is that if I, a 75-year-old user with 25
years of experience of computing, but no experience of networks, can set it
up, it ought to be a piece of cake for a computer, don't you think? They do
much more complicated things than that, surely, like word processing, and
spreadsheets and so on, which just work when you install them, and continue
to work for years. And yes, I am venting, because there is no other way
that I know of to express an opinion or seek an improvement. I used to send
stuff to the MS wishlist, but that is like the Bermuda Triangle. I can't
e-mail Bill, because I gather he gets 4 million mails a day, and he might
not have time to read mine. I just hope that someone from MS will read this
stuff and push for something to be done. There must be some way in which
they can respond to users' feelings and opinions. Maybe they should add a
group for venting (barred to Linux and Mac users of course, or it would end
up like ZD Net.)

David

 

[David Kelsey]

In the light of my last comment above, I had a Mac in 1984, and in 1985 set
up a network of five Macs by the simple means of plugging a cable into each
one, and plugging a terminator on the end. No instructions, no input at
all, because 'it just worked'. And why shouldn't it? I still don't want
another Mac, though!

David

 

[Chuck]

I did have a problem with setting up a USB2 VPN, but no-one in this group
had had any experience with this, so I struggled with trial and error until
eventually I have a two-computer network that works, albeit rather slowly
sometimes. The point I am making is that if I, a 75-year-old user with 25
years of experience of computing, but no experience of networks, can set it
up, it ought to be a piece of cake for a computer, don't you think? They do
much more complicated things than that, surely, like word processing, and
spreadsheets and so on, which just work when you install them, and continue
to work for years. And yes, I am venting, because there is no other way
that I know of to express an opinion or seek an improvement. I used to send
stuff to the MS wishlist, but that is like the Bermuda Triangle. I can't
e-mail Bill, because I gather he gets 4 million mails a day, and he might
not have time to read mine. I just hope that someone from MS will read this
stuff and push for something to be done. There must be some way in which
they can respond to users' feelings and opinions. Maybe they should add a
group for venting (barred to Linux and Mac users of course, or it would end
up like ZD Net.)

David

David,

Computers, and network equipment, are sold today in Walmart. Nine of tem
Walmart shoppers have no more knowledge of computers than how to turn them on.
That's the way it will be for a long time, so best get used to it.

Microsoft will keep making them simpler, with stuff like the Networking Setup
Wizard, which makes it tougher for folks like us to figure out. I have to read
this over several times to figure it out.
(1) This computer connects directly to the Internet. The other computers on my
network connect to the Internet through this computer.
(2) This computer connects to the Internet through another computer on my
network or through a residential gateway.
(3) This computer connects to the Internet directly or through a network hub.
Other computers on my network also connect to the Internet directly or through a
hub.
(4) This computer connects directly to the Internet. I do not have a network
yet.
(5) This computer belongs to a network that does not have an Internet
connection.

And as long as computers are sold in Walmart, and Joe Sixpack buys one and takes
it home as a present for his sons (daughters) 10th birthday, and plugs it in,
he's going to make mistakes. As Malke says, we see more mistakes than
non-mistakes.

We'll solve those mistakes one case at a time. Hopefully a few folks will read
what we write, and learn from it, but we will probably not know of the folks we
help. But we'll hear from the folks who we tried to help, but couldn't, and
they'll call us names.

You can't help Linux / Mac users - they are a lost cause. Ditto folks who use
NetBEUI for networking.

 

[David Kelsey]

Thanks Chuck - I'm still laughing! Very true, though. My immediate
reaction when I see stuff like that is to say just gimme a goddamn network!
You're a computer - you work it out.

David

 

[Kerry Brown]

I did have a problem with setting up a USB2 VPN, but no-one in this group
had had any experience with this, so I struggled with trial and error until
eventually I have a two-computer network that works, albeit rather slowly
sometimes. The point I am making is that if I, a 75-year-old user with 25
years of experience of computing, but no experience of networks, can set it
up, it ought to be a piece of cake for a computer, don't you think? They
do much more complicated things than that, surely, like word processing,
and spreadsheets and so on, which just work when you install them, and
continue to work for years. And yes, I am venting, because there is no
other way that I know of to express an opinion or seek an improvement. I
used to send stuff to the MS wishlist, but that is like the Bermuda
Triangle. I can't e-mail Bill, because I gather he gets 4 million mails a
day, and he might not have time to read mine. I just hope that someone
from MS will read this stuff and push for something to be done. There must
be some way in which they can respond to users' feelings and opinions.
Maybe they should add a group for venting (barred to Linux and Mac users of
course, or it would end up like ZD Net.)

David

By your own admission this is a very uncommon setup. Windows is bloated
enough without MS trying to forsee every conceivable option and making sure
it works automatically. If you have 25 years experience with computers you
have seen all the improvements along the way and must realise that although
computers are easier to use than 25 years ago they are still not at the
appliance level. There are many ways that Windows could be improved and made
easier for the general public. Somehow I think that setting up a VPN over
USB is not at the top of the list. By the way if you are only networking two
computers why is a VPN needed? I think you may have your terms confused. A
VPN is a Virtual Private Network usually set up for private communications
over a larger public network (i.e. the Internet).


Kerry

 

[Chuck]

Thanks Chuck - I'm still laughing! Very true, though. My immediate
reaction when I see stuff like that is to say just gimme a goddamn network!
You're a computer - you work it out.

David

Joe says the same thing. He'll probably unwind after with a couple beers too.
Come to think of it, maybe I will.

The more you understand, the more you know you don't.

 

[David Kelsey]

Hi Kerry - I call it a VPN because that is what the suppliers of the cable
and software call it, to distinguish it from a file transfer cable which
they also supply. Who am I to tell them they are wrong?

I didn't say it was an uncommon setup - I just said no-one in the network
group had any experience of it. But it is presumably one of the purposes of
USB, isn't it, to link computers together, like the Mac. It should be
extremely simple. You buy a cable with a dongle in the middle of it for
£10.15, plug the ends into your two computers, run the short setup prog, and
Robert is your relative. That gives you a shared connection to the net.
That takes five minutes, but the first piece of hardware I had was faulty,
and kept giving failure warnings, and the pidgin English manual didn't help.
However, the exchange part worked fine. Now why would you want to join two
computers with a cable? Why, to share files and e-mail and stuff,
obviously. Even my dumb old Sinclair QL understood that. So why is there
not a default that says 'Click here to set up USB 2 network'? You should be
able to unshare any you want to keep secret from your four year old
daughter. It was only when I got involved with the network wizard, as Chuck
demonstrates here, that my troubles began. Still, computers wouldn't be
half as much fun if they 'just worked', would they?

The system probably wouldn't have worked very well with USB 1.1, which may
be why it is not all that well known, and it only works over five metres,
which rules out most two-room setups.

As for developments over twenty five years, as I said here, my 1984 Mac,
which I still have and use occasionally, (because I have hundreds of
drawings done on it on file) simply used cables in and out of as many
machines as you wished, within reason, with no other setup, while my
Sinclair, also 1984, used audio jackplugs on cables to do the same thing.
Its entire Qdos operating system was contained within a pair of 16k ROMs, so
I guess that wouldn't have added too much to Windows' bloat. But it wasn't
as [pretty as Windows, and I took it out of commission after 96,000 hours of
continuous running apart from mains failures.

David

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi Kerry - I call it a VPN because that is what the suppliers of the cable
and software call it, to distinguish it from a file transfer cable which
they also supply. Who am I to tell them they are wrong?

I didn't say it was an uncommon setup - I just said no-one in the network
group had any experience of it. But it is presumably one of the purposes
of USB, isn't it, to link computers together, like the Mac. It should be
extremely simple. You buy a cable with a dongle in the middle of it for
£10.15, plug the ends into your two computers, run the short setup prog,
and Robert is your relative. That gives you a shared connection to the
net. That takes five minutes, but the first piece of hardware I had was
faulty, and kept giving failure warnings, and the pidgin English manual
didn't help. However, the exchange part worked fine. Now why would you
want to join two computers with a cable? Why, to share files and e-mail
and stuff, obviously. Even my dumb old Sinclair QL understood that. So
why is there not a default that says 'Click here to set up USB 2 network'?
You should be able to unshare any you want to keep secret from your four
year old daughter. It was only when I got involved with the network
wizard, as Chuck demonstrates here, that my troubles began. Still,
computers wouldn't be half as much fun if they 'just worked', would they?

The system probably wouldn't have worked very well with USB 1.1, which may
be why it is not all that well known, and it only works over five metres,
which rules out most two-room setups.

As for developments over twenty five years, as I said here, my 1984 Mac,
which I still have and use occasionally, (because I have hundreds of
drawings done on it on file) simply used cables in and out of as many
machines as you wished, within reason, with no other setup, while my
Sinclair, also 1984, used audio jackplugs on cables to do the same thing.
Its entire Qdos operating system was contained within a pair of 16k ROMs,
so I guess that wouldn't have added too much to Windows' bloat. But it
wasn't as [pretty as Windows, and I took it out of commission after 96,000
hours of continuous running apart from mains failures.

David

LOL, that brought back memories. I had several Sinclair and Timex/Sinclair
computers. I loved Qdos but the whole cassette tape storage was very flakey.
When the Commodore 64 came our with a floppy drive that was the end of my
Sinclairs

I work on computers for a living. Everything from home computers to medium
size networks. I have never encountered a USB network setup. I know it
exists but when I have a need to connect two computers I use a crossover
ethernet cable. The fact that no one in the network group, I'm assuming you
mean this newsgroup, knows about it should be a hint that it's not very
common. If you would have used the far more common ethernet crossover cable
I'm sure you would have had less problems. Most computers have an ethernet
port now. If not the cards are very cheap and easily added to a PC. I'm not
getting on your case just trying to make a point that what you are doing,
USB networking, isn't that common. It's unlikely to get better support in
Windows unless it does become common. Because of the limitations you mention
it's unlikely it will become common.

Kerry

 

[David Kelsey]

Hi Kerry - By hindsight, I think you are probably right. It doesn't always
pay to be an early adopter. But the system was sold to me as faster (400
Mbps) and simpler than a crossover cable, and in any case, only one of my
machines has a network card. As I have never used a network before, other
than the ancient Mac one, I don't know what to expect speedwise, or indeed
what other possibilities there might be in the use of a network. Even my 3
inch thick Resource Kit book has nothing to say about USB2 and not a lot
about networks in general. I'll stick with it now it is working, but I am
still looking for that great big hole in the ether that some of my e-mails
seem to disappear into.

I started with a ZX81, for which I wrote a database to the full capacity of
the machine with every available add-on, and used it for my business at the
time, having built a new keyboard to replace the old rubber membrane. The
tapes contained 250 names and addresses, and the whole setup comprising 16k
of program and 64k of data took 17 minutes to load from a portable tape deck
every morning. When My QL turned up, it already contained a database which
had, as you doubtless remember, a procedural language which I really loved.
It is a pity that things have gone another way, since if Superbasic had
entered the mainstream, many thousands of users would be writing programs
late into the night, and having fun doing it. I just can't get with all the
Cs, and Pascal, and Visual Basic and so on which all seem totally cryptic at
casual reading, and I try to get to bed before 3.00 am whenever I can, so I
am not going to learn them.

Once I had fitted the QL with a faster processor and 2MB of RAM, and two 4MB
floppies, and got it to drive a Hewlett Packard monochrome printer, and an
Apple dot matrix, my cup of happiness was overflowing, and my business was
almost totally controlled by the machine which started automatically, loaded
18 programs, brought them all up to date with each other, summarised them,
and told me what to do next. Good days. One of the nice things was that
you knew all the OS writers and programmers and hardware makers etc.
personally, and could sometimes get them to alter something for you, while
the concept of charging for tech support was unheard of. If something
didn't work as expected, you rang up the author and asked him what was
wrong. Quill was in 66k - can you imagine a Windows word processor fitting
into 66k?

Cheers, David

Hi Kerry - I call it a VPN because that is what the suppliers of the
cable and software call it, to distinguish it from a file transfer cable
which they also supply. Who am I to tell them they are wrong?

I didn't say it was an uncommon setup - I just said no-one in the network
group had any experience of it. But it is presumably one of the purposes
of USB, isn't it, to link computers together, like the Mac. It should be
extremely simple. You buy a cable with a dongle in the middle of it for
£10.15, plug the ends into your two computers, run the short setup prog,
and Robert is your relative. That gives you a shared connection to the
net. That takes five minutes, but the first piece of hardware I had was
faulty, and kept giving failure warnings, and the pidgin English manual
didn't help. However, the exchange part worked fine. Now why would you
want to join two computers with a cable? Why, to share files and e-mail
and stuff, obviously. Even my dumb old Sinclair QL understood that. So
why is there not a default that says 'Click here to set up USB 2
network'? You should be able to unshare any you want to keep secret from
your four year old daughter. It was only when I got involved with the
network wizard, as Chuck demonstrates here, that my troubles began.
Still, computers wouldn't be half as much fun if they 'just worked',
would they?

The system probably wouldn't have worked very well with USB 1.1, which
may be why it is not all that well known, and it only works over five
metres, which rules out most two-room setups.

As for developments over twenty five years, as I said here, my 1984 Mac,
which I still have and use occasionally, (because I have hundreds of
drawings done on it on file) simply used cables in and out of as many
machines as you wished, within reason, with no other setup, while my
Sinclair, also 1984, used audio jackplugs on cables to do the same thing.
Its entire Qdos operating system was contained within a pair of 16k ROMs,
so I guess that wouldn't have added too much to Windows' bloat. But it
wasn't as [pretty as Windows, and I took it out of commission after
96,000 hours of continuous running apart from mains failures.

David

LOL, that brought back memories. I had several Sinclair and Timex/Sinclair
computers. I loved Qdos but the whole cassette tape storage was very
flakey. When the Commodore 64 came our with a floppy drive that was the
end of my Sinclairs

I work on computers for a living. Everything from home computers to medium
size networks. I have never encountered a USB network setup. I know it
exists but when I have a need to connect two computers I use a crossover
ethernet cable. The fact that no one in the network group, I'm assuming
you mean this newsgroup, knows about it should be a hint that it's not
very common. If you would have used the far more common ethernet crossover
cable I'm sure you would have had less problems. Most computers have an
ethernet port now. If not the cards are very cheap and easily added to a
PC. I'm not getting on your case just trying to make a point that what you
are doing, USB networking, isn't that common. It's unlikely to get better
support in Windows unless it does become common. Because of the
limitations you mention it's unlikely it will become common.

Kerry

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi Kerry - By hindsight, I think you are probably right. It doesn't
always pay to be an early adopter. But the system was sold to me as
faster (400 Mbps) and simpler than a crossover cable, and in any case,
only one of my machines has a network card. As I have never used a
network before, other than the ancient Mac one, I don't know what to
expect speedwise, or indeed what other possibilities there might be in the
use of a network. Even my 3 inch thick Resource Kit book has nothing to
say about USB2 and not a lot about networks in general. I'll stick with
it now it is working, but I am still looking for that great big hole in
the ether that some of my e-mails seem to disappear into.

I started with a ZX81, for which I wrote a database to the full capacity
of the machine with every available add-on, and used it for my business at
the time, having built a new keyboard to replace the old rubber membrane.
The tapes contained 250 names and addresses, and the whole setup
comprising 16k of program and 64k of data took 17 minutes to load from a
portable tape deck every morning. When My QL turned up, it already
contained a database which had, as you doubtless remember, a procedural
language which I really loved. It is a pity that things have gone another
way, since if Superbasic had entered the mainstream, many thousands of
users would be writing programs late into the night, and having fun doing
it. I just can't get with all the Cs, and Pascal, and Visual Basic and so
on which all seem totally cryptic at casual reading, and I try to get to
bed before 3.00 am whenever I can, so I am not going to learn them.

I wrote a database for a video store for a ZX81 with the 16 kb expansion
pack. It's amazing what limited hardware can do and how efficient it forces
programmers to be. A customer could be updated with a couple of key strokes,
movie rentals could be done in real time. Eventually it was replaced with a
succesion of commercial programs written in Turbo Pascal and eventually
Delphi. It is still available but it is so bloated from different
programmers adding features over the years that it takes the latest hardware
to run it as fast as the ZX81 could. I liked the Basic built into the
Sinclair but learning a more structured language was a revelation. Read some
Niklaus Wirth and check out Modula-2 as a start. It's not much use for real
world programming but it teaches good structure which is almost impossible
in Basic. I still sometimes write out a very simplified first draft of a
program in Modula-2 to see if the overall flow works.

Once I had fitted the QL with a faster processor and 2MB of RAM, and two
4MB floppies, and got it to drive a Hewlett Packard monochrome printer,
and an Apple dot matrix, my cup of happiness was overflowing, and my
business was almost totally controlled by the machine which started
automatically, loaded 18 programs, brought them all up to date with each
other, summarised them, and told me what to do next. Good days. One of
the nice things was that you knew all the OS writers and programmers and
hardware makers etc. personally, and could sometimes get them to alter
something for you, while the concept of charging for tech support was
unheard of. If something didn't work as expected, you rang up the author
and asked him what was wrong. Quill was in 66k - can you imagine a
Windows word processor fitting into 66k?

Cheers, David

Check out Linux and open source. It still happens that way with some
programs.

Kerry

 

[David Kelsey]

Interesting - thanks for that, I'll see what I can get hold of in that
direction.

David

 

[David Kelsey]

Kerry - I had a look at Wirth and Modula 2 and my brain exploded. It has
been working in FIFO mode for some years now, and anything I poke in at one
end squeezes something else out at the other. (Remember peek and poke?)
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, but I think for the sake of my limited
sanity, I'll have to give them a miss.

David

 

[Kerry Brown]

Kerry - I had a look at Wirth and Modula 2 and my brain exploded. It has
been working in FIFO mode for some years now, and anything I poke in at
one end squeezes something else out at the other. (Remember peek and
poke?) Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, but I think for the sake of my
limited sanity, I'll have to give them a miss.

David

LOL, I do remember peek and poke. Doubt they'd work on a modern OS though.
You could use them to program self modifying code which was fun and useful
for obscuring your code when showing a beta program to a prospective buyer


heers, Kerry