Vista and Linksys weirdness

OK, now this one is just plain weird!!!

At my desk I have a cable that runs from a hub at my main server (which provides my connection to the Internet). At the desk that cable goes into a small 5 port Linksys hub (a hub NOT a switch) model EFAH05W. The hub then feeds three machines. A old HP desktop running XP. My new Sony FZ running Vista and an old Sony laptop that I use for software testing also running XP.

My ISP (Cincinnati bell) has a page which allows for a speed test. The desktop and old Sony show a down speed of 4 meg plus. The Vista machine shows a down speed varying from 1 meg to 400k. I have swapped the output cables from the hub and the speeds stay the same.

On a lark I took the Sony FZ to the server and connected directly to the hub there. I got 4 meg plus!!! Went back to my desk took the cable that went from the server hub to the desktop hub and plugged it directly into the Sony FZ and got 4 meg plus. Put that cable back in as the feed to the desktop hub and took an output cable back into the Sony FZ and it dropped to 1meg again.

This is really bizarre. It is appears there is some incompatibility between my Sony FZ and this little hub. Yet the two XP machines have no issues at all. The Sony FZ can get a 4meg feed if I bypass the hub. Now my understanding of the hub technology is that it is pretty much an un-embellished pass through of the feed it receives. What am I missing here?????

This one has me truly baffled!

Gary

Sorry about the cross post. I put it in the windows area first then realized it REALLY belongs here.

 

You are lucky to get Vista working with Linksys at all. My Linksys router does not work with Vista. Microsoft are due to fix that in SP1 - maybe that will help you as well.

 

Ah yes but this is NOT a Linksys router, it is a simple hub. What possible interplay can there be between Vista and a HUB???!!!??? It's not even a switch just a generic hub. ...shakes head... I am baffled.

Gary

 

There's still software/firmware there.
Vista seam's to have a hard time with anything Linksys that isn't a physical card in PC's. I'd say it's more Linksys's software though and M$ is working to fix it.
Not shure why they would but if I loaded OpenWRT into my Linksys home router.
Actually I like vista but would recommend stay away with it until SP1 comes out. Theres just stupid little querks that make it freaking imposible to work with at times. (Updates = black screen at boot till booted to safe mode and rebooted back to normal, even from safe mode login screen).

 

I was under the impression that a SWITCH had software, but a simple HUB does not.

Gary

P.S. Just to be clear this is NOT a wireless hub it is a simple wired only hub. No frills at all.

 

Even if all the hub does is to broadcast network traffic at a physical level it needs some type of instruction to do so. The big difference between a hub and a switch is that the switch transmits to the MAC address of a particular PC, whereas the hub will simply forward all network traffic to all ports and use a single collision domain. Even if the hub is forwarding all physical traffic it may be a signal where the data can be interpreted by XP and not by Vista. Just because a hub forwards traffic by a broadcast method does not mean it is in the format your Vista laptop expects and it doesn't mean that the hub does not modify the data. For all I know it could be something as simple as your ethernet card ignoring all Broadcast traffic.

Clearly the OS plays a role since the documentation for your hub (which I am viewing on the Linksys website now) states that out of the MS OS's it supports up to Windows 2000 (doesn't even mention XP since the documentation was likely made before the release of XP).

I would try updating your Ethernet card driver's if possible. If that doesn't help I would call Linksys and see if they can offer any insight. Perhaps your hub does have some type of switching capabilities that can be unabled. Some hubs that are labelled as such actually have some switching capabilities. If there is an issue with Vista and this hub it is likely they have heard about it even if the problem isn't with the hub, but the configurations of the Vista PC. They may have a solution. Also, just because one new support person at Linksys doesn't have an answer doesn't rule out the fact that another might.

Hopefully someone here with a bit more insight can provide a better answer first. Networking is not my specialty by any means and I was blessed that a simple firmware update for my wireless router made Vista work perfectly for me.

 

I just got off an extended chat with tier 2 support at LinkSys. They admit there is some issue, and have taken ALL of their hubs of the "Hardware Supported Under Vista" list! The person I chatted with was very helpful but a little short on the specifics of the issue. She promised to have an engineer contact me. I'll continue to dig into this and report back.

Gary

 

Thanks for the feedback. I am very curious as to what the engineer will say the issue is or what resolutions are available. Hopefully you won't need new hardware.