Network Slowdown In Vista Due To Audio Confirmed By Microsoft

Last week, we posted news that playing music in your Windows Vista installation would slow your network performance down. As odd as it seems, it’s true and has been verified by Microsoft. In an e-mail sent to a ZDNet editor, they note that the performance degradation is “expected behaviour” and further enforced that by saying “This is by design.”

So it is a known issue by Microsoft, but it doesn’t look like it will be something that is fixable, or at least it seems that way since they don’t consider it a problem. It is noted though, that this only affects a local network and shouldn’t slow down your connection to the internet. Though the oddity exists, it really shouldn’t have any noticeable effect, unless you are copying large files.

“The connection between media playback and networking is not immediately obvious. But as you know, the drivers involved in both activities run at extremely high priority. As a result, the network driver can cause media playback to degrade. This shows up to the user as things like popping and crackling during audio playback. Users generally hate this, hence the trade off.”

Source: ZDNet Blogs