For a Microsoft MVP: Thanks for your posting, Mr. Nichol. Please understand
that since I didn't write the latest patch software at
http://www.lvllord.de/, I don't really know with certainty all of the details
of how it does what it does. But within
http://www.lvllord.de/ I extracted
some things to quote here that tell us that the patch probably does not
change the value of TcpNumConnections in the registry and that there isn't
any registry key that will allow a user to fix this problem (Sorry, in my
previous posting in this thread even I thought that editing the registry
could have been an alternative to running this patch; but according to
http://www.lvllord.de/, at least editing a registry key is not an
alternative.); the quote below I took from what appeared after clicking on
the hyperlink “FAQ†in the homepage heading “Patcher version 2.12 released!â€
at
http://www.lvllord.de/ (I added the missing words “the†before “limit viaâ€
and between “via†and “registry†and “do†and corrected spelling or
typographical errors to “attempt†and “attempts†in the quote below.):
“I read something, that it's possible to change the limit via the registry
(TcpNumConnections). Is that true?
Unfortunately not. Because the concurrent connection attempt limit has
nothing to do with concurrent connections, this registry-key is useless.
Unfortunately there is no registry-key, which would allow the user to
change the concurrent connection attempts.â€
Here is a clue to more specifically what the patch might be doing (unless L.
v. L. or L.V.L. Lord, the author of
http://www.lvllord.de/, found some other
way to deal with this problem, which I just guess is not too likely) that
came from the Web site
http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1497
referred to earlier by Carey Frisch in this thread (In the quote below I
added the hyphen in “registry-editable†and the word “it†after “possible to
edit.â€):
“In addition, even though the setting was registry-editable in XP SP1, it
is now only possible to edit it by changing it directly in the system file
tcpip.sys. To make matters worse, that file is in use, so you also need to
be in Safe mode in order to edit it.â€
A whole other approach, which might take more time than just studying what I
wrote here and the information at
http://www.lvllord.de/ or even someone at
Microsoft Corporation running Mr. Lord's patch, might be for a
Microsoft-Corporation employee to write to Mr. Lord using his e-mail address
provided when you click his hyperlinked name “LvlLord†which appears on on
the left-hand side of
http://www.lvllord.de/ under “Copyright © 2004†to ask
him very specifically how his patch does what it does (At first I had his
actual e-mail address here, which could be convenient for readers of this
posting; but on second thought I decided not to explicitly quote his e-mail
address here in hopes that the way I am doing things might cut down on the
amount of spam e-mail Mr. Lord might otherwise receive in his e-mail
account.).
In the quotation below I corrected an English or typographical error,
changing “know†to “known†and added both the hyphen in â€half-open†and the
period after “half-open connections.†Have a look at this informative
posting from within
http://www.msfn.org/print.php?id=9017 :
"#5 Posted by zaphodiv at 12 Aug 2004 - 16:12
Aaron, Johnsawyer the Inquirer and a lot of other people have misunderstood
this.
SP2 adds a limit on the number of connections which are in the process of
being opened.
It is _not_ a limit on the number of simultaneous open connections.
The TcpNumConnections registry entry does not affect the limit on half-open
connections.
The patch from
http://www.lvllord.de/ is currently the only known way to
remove this limit."
As to the other change to be made by running version 2.12 of this patch,
here are some details I found about it that might provide a clue to Microsoft
Corporation as to what the patch might be doing regarding the version
recognition; I took this quote from under the heading “Patcher version 2.12
released!†on the homepage of
http://www.lvllord.de/:
“In addition a small bug with the version-recognition has been fixed. For
Windows XP versions before SP2 the system was recognised as SP2 RC1.
Because no file has been changed (in both cases), this is not critical...â€
Here I wish to point out that Mr. Lord's patch is kindly provided free of
charge. From what I have read, Microsoft's motivation in reducing the limit
on the number of concurrent, half-open, TCP/IP connections to ten in Windows
XP Service Pack 2 was to protect against certain types of computer attacks
involving worms, etc., a motivation for which the world could thank Microsoft
Corporation. Once again the purpose in increasing the limit on the number of
concurrent, half-open, TCP/IP connections is, following the advice of one or
more other people who posted this sort of advice on the Internet, to raise
the performance level of at least one piece of third-party software.
Assuming that the above posting by zaphodiv, which asserts that the use of
Mr. Lord's patch is currently the only way to remove the limit of ten on the
number of concurrent, half-open, TCP/IP connections is correct, the options
that I see for changing this limit in Windows XP are extremely few: 1) Use
Mr. Lord's patch. 2) Drop back from Windows XP Service Pack 2 to Windows XP
Service Pack 1 or earlier. 3) Have Microsoft Corporation develop an update
to Windows XP Service Pack 2 which gives Windows-XP users the option of
raising the limit on the number of concurrent, half-open TCP/IP connections
for certain programs, if they wish.
If Microsoft Corporation grants permission for option 1, then options 1 and
2 would be the short-run options for Windows-XP users who want to raise the
performance levels of certain pieces of third-party software. Options 1 and
3 above are decisions to be made by Microsoft Corporation. The purposes of
this posting are A) to ask if Microsoft Corporation will permit the use of
Mr. Lord's patch, B) to aid Microsoft Corporation in making that decision to
provide as much information as this poster can immediately provide on the
issue in hopes that Microsoft Corporation can better make an informed
decision on whether the use of Mr. Lord's patch is consistent or not with
Microsoft's End-User License Agreement (EULA) for Windows XP, and C) to show
both i) the other current option 2 to Windows-XP, Service-Pack-2 users who
want to raise the limit on the number of concurrent, half-open, TCP/IP
connections above ten and ii) the possibly longer-term, potential option 3 to
Microsoft Corporation for dealing with this problem. The permission to use
Mr. Lord's patch is not for me to grant, but rather Microsoft's permission to
grant or deny. But only for the best performance of the third-party software
in the Windows- XP environment, to both take advantage of the other fixes
and/or improvements in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and to increase the
performance level for certain third-party software, as suggested by one or
more other people, the use of Mr. Lord's patch is currently the best,
short-run option. An employee of Microsoft Corporation, please post a reply
granting or denying permission for the use of Mr. Lord's patch in answer to
this posting. The following could potentially be more difficult. But if you
could also place your answer within a broader context of the types of things
permitted in the Windows-XP EULA, for example as Mr. Nichol stated that
editing the registry is permissible, that principle might help other people
with similar questions in the future. Thanks in advance for doing so.
