network location awareness in Vista
Well, its been a while since my last post, so I'll take this opportunity, as I get ready to sit on a plane for 11 hours, to write about one of the new features coming in Vista around GP that will be most welcome. Namely, the switch from ICMP PING-based slow link detection to using the Network Location Awareness (NLA) service that is built into Vista. What this means for us GP types is no more issues around GP breaking because ICMP in turned off on the internal network. NLA uses more intelligent protocols and algorithms for detecting whether a DC is available and how fast the link to it is. This means that GP processing can be smarter about knowing whether it really is on a slow link to the DC or that it just seems like one! Also, because NLA is a dynamic service, changes in link status to the DC can be reacted upon in a more timely manner. For example, if you are off the corporate network and your machine performs a background GP refresh, it will of course fail. However, in Vista, as soon as you plug back into the corporate network (either locally or over VPN) NLA will detect that the DC is available again, note that the last processing cycle failed, and will automatically refresh policy then and there. This will be handy for enforcing policy as soon as someone connects to the corporate network, rather than waiting until the next refresh cycle, which could be up to 120 minutes (90 min. +-30 min) away.
Now, time to load up on laptop batteries for that flight...