Some Notes on the Machines

This one will save you a whole lot of time in many contexts.

sitemagic.org

Here is a very good comprehensive step-by-step discussion:

pixelprivacy.com/resources/best-wi-fi-channel/

Mac is listed first, but Windows is well-discussed after, a Linux command-line (!) method is nicely explained afterward, and Android and iPhone afterwards.

The only item I might suggest, is that the 5 GHz band can sometimes produce far better performance, depending on many factors, including the makeup of walls, if and only if both the WAP and all client devices support 5 GHz. I don’t buy or recommend WAPs which do either/or though, just both, and on a client, if I get 4 bars with 5 GHz and 5 bars with 2.4 GHz, I generally see better throughput on the 5 GHz.

An excellent test recommended by Watchguard:

https://speedof.me

A very good one:

https://testmy.net/SmarTest/combinedAuto

and another:

https://sourceforge.net/speedtest/

Here’s the first one we saw which was HTML5 only, no Flash or Java:

http://www.bandwidthplace.com

Here’s a commonly used one which requires Flash:

http://www.speedtest.net

And another which uses java:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

If you are checking this for wifi, we do recommend that you check for and rectify wifi channel congestion as a next step.

The MMCSS (not sure why the extra letters) is a service in Vista (SP1+), 7, Server 2008, and Server 2008R2, which places priority on video and audio data. Here are some good tweaks. Click here for a VBS script, called MCSO, which does everything below automatically.

So we go here in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile

open the item named “NetworkThrottlingIndex”, and change it to “FFFFFFFF” (that’s eight F’s) hex. We can do the same for “SystemResponsiveness”.

Then drill further down to here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\Tasks

and you’ll see a list of folders. Each folder is a “multimedia profile” according to one reference. Each can contain the following:

Affinity        dword:00000000
Background Only        False
BackgroundPriority        dword:00000001
Clock Rate       dword:00002710
GPU Priority        dword:00000001
Priority       dword:00000001
Scheduling Category       High
SFIO Priority       High

I kept the “Window Manager” set at the default, and set the rest to the above. According to one reference it is possible to create custom multimedia profiles and use some applications’ capabilities to assign them, I have not tried this yet.

According to one reference, the above changes only activate at reboot. However, I have found that if you restart MMCSS and then Audiosrv, the same results obtain.

Addendum. Have just recently looked into Windows 10 in this. It appears to be a driver, not a service, in 10. Will be investigating further. Not sure about Audiosrv either.

This one works very well, unlike more than one I tested which does not:

github.com/c4software/python-sitemap

I don’t like to keep all of my eggs in one basket. Here are two sources of books I have used with excellent results:

thriftbooks.com

alibris.com

There have been a number of attempts at this, but this one appears to work well:

xbrowsersync.org

Desktop and mobile.

A sample SMTP conversation.  Blue is transmit, red is receive; all exists within a command-prompt window.  The messages received will vary somewhat, but the initial numbers won’t.  The greater-than and less-than signs (< >) are required. The below works fine in Cygwin with ‘inetutils’ installed (which includes ‘telnet’), or in CMD with the Windows ‘telnet’ installed. Linuxes obviously have various telnets! ‘putty’ on Windows will do it also, in telnet mode, port 25, just replace the first line with GUI putty setup.

telnet mail.srcdomain.com 25

220 mail.destdomain.com ESMTP

HELO test.srcdomain.com

250 mail.destdomain.com

MAIL FROM: <email@srcdomain.com>

250 2.1.0 Sender OK

RCPT TO: <email@destdomain.com>

250 2.1.5 Ok

DATA

354 Enter mail, end with “.” on a line by itself

testing
testing
testing
.

250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as xxxxxxx

The following method is the Microsoft-recommended current one. You may need to use Install-Module instead of Update-Module depending on pre-existing installations et cetera:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Force -Scope Process
Update-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement
Update-Module -Name AzureAD
Update-Module -Name MSOnline
Import-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement
Import-Module -Name MSOnline
Import-Module -Name AzureAD
Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName login@domain.com -ShowProgress $true

The following method is the previous, and is the one which works pre-Windows-10 and/or Powershell before 5.1:

$UserCredential = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking

When you’re done, be sure to do the following afterwards, or you may have to wait for automatic session expiration.

Remove-PSSession $Session

Finally, a real repair tool:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2698555/microsoft-net-framework-repair-tool-is-available