Winsock2 Update Performance Enhancements and More Forrest Stroud
Performance Enhancements and More
This Winsock2 update provides numerous performance enhancements over the 1.1 release and also resolves several issues with the earlier Winsock2 release, including incompatibilities with Internet Explorer 4.0 that could result in page faults, problems with IGMP V2 support that could cause applications to drop out of multicast groups, and slow performance with some IPX applications (the earlier version of Winsock2 was available only as part of a Microsoft Software Developers Kit). Network performance improvements over WinSock 1.1 result from new features like large windows, selective acknowledgments, and fast retransmission and recovery.
Winsock2 updates your TCP/IP stack and numerous winsock files including the wsock32.dll file, but it doesn't update the 16-bit winsock.dll file, so any 16-bit net applications that you're using will continue to perform under Windows Sockets 1.x instead of Winsock2. Your 32-bit applications, on the other hand, will be able to take full advantage of the new release. Look for updates of your favorite apps to be released in the future with Winsock2 optimized code, which will allow the apps to perform 'net functions even faster.
