10.27.09

Cool new tool for comparing IE Zone Security Settings

Posted in Cool New Products at 3:14 pm by Administrator

On my twitter site: http://twitter.com/grouppolicyguy

10.23.09

Group Policy Slow Link Detection in Vista and beyond

Posted in General Stuff at 9:14 am by Administrator

As many folks probably know, Group Policy slow link detection prior to Windows Vista relied on a series of ICMP pings to determine link speed between the client and domain controller. This process was fairly inprecise and was fraught with issues because many folks have turned off ICMP on their internal networks to prevent malware that leverages this protocol from exploiting this. The end result was that you either had to disable slow link detection, or watch GP processing fail completely.

When Windows Vista and Server 2008 shipped, they introduced a completely new way of detecting slow links for Group Policy processing that no longer leverages ICMP. The process uses the Network Location Awareness (NLA) service to determine the link speed between client and DC, but the explanation of HOW that works has been relatively undocumented…until now. Mike Stephens at Microsoft has written a great blog that describes this process in great detail. Check it out!