Messenger questions for John Holmes.

[Charles Tomaras]

John,

Why has it been so difficult for so many of us to get MSN and Windows
Messenger to communicate properly for video, voice, and file transfer. I've
spent the last couple of years trying to open ports, close ports, fix
firewalls, change web camera hardware, update software etc etc. and I still
can't reliably set up a computer to use Messenger for these most desirable
applications. The leaked 6 beta I'm using works the best so far but it still
has problems.

Here's the latest mind bender. I've got MSN Messenger 6 (0263 build) on my
desktop and laptop. My friend has it on his work machine, home desktop and
home laptop. I can use all features when messaging with him from both of my
computers to his work machine and home desktop but I can't get audio to
connect to his laptop from my desktop machine. It will connect from my
laptop. His laptop will connect reliably for all features to his home
desktop and his work machine. Why should it work properly for most of the
scenarios but not work from certain computers that work fine with the
others? Makes no sense and I can't envision an approach to troubleshoot it.

Microsoft desperately needs a local or remote assistance type of wizard
application to analyze Messenger, networking, hardware and OS settings and
automating the task of troubleshooting and making these machines talk to
each other. I'm a fairly experienced Windows user with far more computer
knowledge than the majority of my acquaintances, who rely on me for support,
and Messenger has me continually stumped. Is it me, or do these same issues
arise with frequency in MS's usability studies for Messenger?

Can you shed some light on the future for Messenger configuration issues? Is
there hope for a soon-to-come simple solution so messaging will be nearly as
reliable as making a phone call?

Thanks in advance for whatever insights you are able to share publicly on
this newsgroup or privately via email. (Having worked as a sound mixer for
many Microsoft film/video shoots and events over the years I've signed more
NDA's that you can shake a stick at. It's ok, you can tell me your
secrets!)

Charles Tomaras
Seattle, WA

[John Holmes [MSFT]]

Xref: kermit microsoft.public.windowsxp.messenger:44192

NATs present quite a bit of trouble in establishing a peer to peer
connection. If the NAT is not UPnP capable, I use a protocol that looks a
good bit like STUN to traverse the NAT. This allows us to get it right most
of the time.

What makes matters worse though is that the user can't do anything about it
by manually opening ports. This is for a number of reasons: first, we don't
actually control the SIP signaling that sets up the a/v call. Inside these
SIP packets is embedded your IP address and port that will be used for
media. But until recently (our v6) we haven't had the ability to specify an
external (public) IP and port to use for the call.

Now in v6, we do have that ability and are traversing many more devices than
we used to. I'm glad to hear that it's working better for you than previous
versions.

As for why you can't connect to your friend's laptop, but you can connect to
his desktop, I can think of three possibilities off the top of my head:
1. the laptop has some firewall settings that the desktop does not
2. the laptop is multihomed. We should do much better with multihomed
machines in v6, but we may still have some issues.
3. the laptop's microphone is not working correctly. We rely on the
audio stream coming from his machine to open up a hole in the NAT for your
audio stream to go in.

You should be able to determine much more about the network configuration
between these two machines if you sniff the packets going back and forth
between them, if you have the software to do something like that.

The remote assistance connectivity wizard application idea you have is a
good one and is something we have been thinking about. Our top issues with
messenger involve connectivity and we are trying our best to solve them. v6
should be a big step forward (a/v should work much more often, webcam and
file transfer should always work) but we still have room to progress.

One final point: most of the issues we have now are not really because of
Messenger. Over the years, NAT manufacturers have built in application
specific code into their routers to detect messenger packets and then try to
"fix up" these packets to allow things like a/v and file transfer to work
across their routers. Unfortunately, this severely impairs our efforts now
to fix these things the right way, because the NAT thinks it knows better
than we do and "fixes up" our packets, messing them up in the process. So
some NATs that would otherwise work with v6 don't because they outsmart
themselves.

--
John Holmes
Developer, MSN Messenger

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send e-mail directly to this alias. This alias is for
newsgroup purposes only.


"Charles Tomaras" > wrote in message
...
> John,
>
> Why has it been so difficult for so many of us to get MSN and Windows
> Messenger to communicate properly for video, voice, and file transfer.
I've
> spent the last couple of years trying to open ports, close ports, fix
> firewalls, change web camera hardware, update software etc etc. and I
still
> can't reliably set up a computer to use Messenger for these most desirable
> applications. The leaked 6 beta I'm using works the best so far but it
still
> has problems.
>
> Here's the latest mind bender. I've got MSN Messenger 6 (0263 build) on my
> desktop and laptop. My friend has it on his work machine, home desktop
and
> home laptop. I can use all features when messaging with him from both of
my
> computers to his work machine and home desktop but I can't get audio to
> connect to his laptop from my desktop machine. It will connect from my
> laptop. His laptop will connect reliably for all features to his home
> desktop and his work machine. Why should it work properly for most of the
> scenarios but not work from certain computers that work fine with the
> others? Makes no sense and I can't envision an approach to troubleshoot
it.
>
> Microsoft desperately needs a local or remote assistance type of wizard
> application to analyze Messenger, networking, hardware and OS settings and
> automating the task of troubleshooting and making these machines talk to
> each other. I'm a fairly experienced Windows user with far more computer
> knowledge than the majority of my acquaintances, who rely on me for
support,
> and Messenger has me continually stumped. Is it me, or do these same
issues
> arise with frequency in MS's usability studies for Messenger?
>
> Can you shed some light on the future for Messenger configuration issues?
Is
> there hope for a soon-to-come simple solution so messaging will be nearly
as
> reliable as making a phone call?
>
> Thanks in advance for whatever insights you are able to share publicly on
> this newsgroup or privately via email. (Having worked as a sound mixer for
> many Microsoft film/video shoots and events over the years I've signed
more
> NDA's that you can shake a stick at. It's ok, you can tell me your
> secrets!)
>
> Charles Tomaras
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
>

[Charles Tomaras]

Thanks for your response. Please see additional information embedded below.

"John Holmes [MSFT]" > wrote in message
...
> As for why you can't connect to your friend's laptop, but you can connect
to
> his desktop, I can think of three possibilities off the top of my head:
> 1. the laptop has some firewall settings that the desktop does not
> 2. the laptop is multihomed. We should do much better with multihomed
> machines in v6, but we may still have some issues.

What is multi-homed?


> 3. the laptop's microphone is not working correctly. We rely on the
> audio stream coming from his machine to open up a hole in the NAT for your
> audio stream to go in.

Microphone is fine on the laptop since he can connect with full video and
voice to his other home desktop and I can connect with video and voice to
his home desktop. Just can't talk from my computer to his Vaio laptop.

>
> You should be able to determine much more about the network configuration
> between these two machines if you sniff the packets going back and forth
> between them, if you have the software to do something like that.
>
> The remote assistance connectivity wizard application idea you have is a
> good one and is something we have been thinking about. Our top issues with
> messenger involve connectivity and we are trying our best to solve them.
v6
> should be a big step forward (a/v should work much more often, webcam and
> file transfer should always work) but we still have room to progress.
>
> One final point: most of the issues we have now are not really because of
> Messenger. Over the years, NAT manufacturers have built in application
> specific code into their routers to detect messenger packets and then try
to
> "fix up" these packets to allow things like a/v and file transfer to work
> across their routers. Unfortunately, this severely impairs our efforts now
> to fix these things the right way, because the NAT thinks it knows better
> than we do and "fixes up" our packets, messing them up in the process. So
> some NATs that would otherwise work with v6 don't because they outsmart
> themselves.


What would be great is for a WIZARD that would point out these conflicts and
let us know why we aren't connecting. Please have the wizard do the sniffing
for us! :)