Longhorn Networking Stack: P2P and Upnp

Today was the Longhorn Networking Chat, I've organized some of the QA and will do a series of posts on different topics that came up. See the full transcript on Channel 9.

UPnP:

Harish_msft (Expert):
Q: "web serviices for network devices " <--- whats this?

A: in LH we are making a significant enhance to discovery and configuration of network devices. This work will allow a network device to connect to the PC much like a USB device. They will be enumerated, discovered installed via extensions to PnP. This support is protocol agnostic. Web Services for devices is a rich protocol framework that allows for network devices to better describe themselves. It affords greater security and reliability than upnp 1.0. Additionally it enables scenaiors that are beyond a single subnet.

Harish_msft (Expert):
Q: Are there any plans to include/extend UPnP capabilities in LH?

A: LH will have support for Upnp 1.0. Additionally we are extending existing PnP to include network devices including upnp 1.0 devices. Customers will be able to "connect" a upnp 1.0 device to their PC and have a similar experience they have connecting a USB device in terms of the device being easily and securely available to the user. We are supporting the needs of our upnp 1.0 customers.

Harish_msft (Expert):
Q: Will the LH home networking utilize both UPnP and WS* or just UPnP ?

A: LH will support both. Upnp 1.0 for extisting and backward compatbilty and WS for future network devices.

Harish_msft (Expert):
Q: will there be measures to make UPnP more safe?

A: we are actively looking into inproving the security issues in upnp 1.0. We hope to finalize by WinHEC.

Jawad_Khaki_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Any improvements to come from networked printers ?

A: Longhorn will support printers that use the web services framework. Harish can fill in more.

gursharan MSFT (Expert):
Q: Do you have plans to include some peer-to-peer enabled apps in LH, eg. P2P update management, file sharing?

A: Yes we plan to provide some out of the box user experience that is based on use of P2P platform capabilities.

gursharan MSFT (Expert):
Q: Will networking be easier for home users, eg auto discover each computer on the network then create secure connections for sharing data ? I know many that have so many problems sharing files on a home network

A: Making home networking easier is a key focus in Longhorn; among the aspects made simpler are setup, discovery of network resources, access and use of networked resources, diagnostics, roaming, etc. Considerable effort is going into making file sharing simple.

Peer to Peer:

gursharan MSFT (Expert):
Q: Regarding peer-to-peer applications, there was that Advanced Network Whatsit package that added P2P libraries to the system, which 3Degrees also used. There will be in Longhorn by default? Will there be managed versions of such libraries?

A: P2P platform functionality provides application developers with a suite of powerful capabilities to register named entities, to resolve names into addresses, to determine presence of endpoints, to connect and initiate activities in a peer-to-peer fashion. Multipoint messaging capabilities are also being made available to service the needs of a group of endpoints. In addition Longhorn will include some out of box experiences that exploit the underlying peer-to-peer infrastructure

Dave_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Regarding peer-to-peer applications, there was that Advanced Network Whatsit package that added P2P libraries to the system, which 3Degrees also used. There will be in Longhorn by default? Will there be managed versions of such libraries?

A: Yes the P2P capabilities that appeared in the Advanced Networking Pack for XP will be in Longhorn by default.

Jawad_Khaki_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Can you talk about the new peer to peer functions in longhorn

A: P2P platform functionality provides application developers with a suite of powerful capabilities to register named entities, to resolve names into addresses, to determine presence of endpoints, to connect and initiate activities in a peer-to-peer fashion. It will also support multi-group communication.

Dave_MSFT (Expert): Q: Regarding peer-to-peer applications, there was that Advanced Network Whatsit package that added P2P libraries to the system, which 3Degrees also used. There will be in Longhorn by default? Will there be managed versions of such libraries?
A: Yes the P2P capabilities that appeared in the Advanced Networking Pack for XP will be in Longhorn by default, along with additional P2P capabilities. We plan to provide managed versions in the future.

Henry_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Since Longhorn'll be doing a lot with managed code, will there be managed interfaces to hook into the network stack, to e.g. create a managed firewall and similar?

A: We are doing a bunch of managed code work in LH - the .NET Frameworks Net Classes (System.Net) are in my group. Our current hooks for getting into the stack to do a firewall though are all in kernel mode, and managed code isn't supported in the kernel. Going forward we will extend these to user mode and at that point there will be managed code interfaces.