[Vpn-help] New 2.1.0 alpha 6 release ...

Matthew Grooms mgrooms at shrew.net
Mon Feb 4 18:41:38 CST 2008


All,

I just posted a new 2.1.0 alpha 6 release on the website. The big news 
is the addition of two new NDIS6 drivers that support Vista 32/64 bit 
Platforms. With any new major addition, there are of course a few 
caveats involved. Here is the dirt ...

1) Windows Vista systems do not allow unsigned drivers to be installed 
under most circumstances. Before you attempt to install the Shrew Soft 
Client on a Vista computer, please read the following articles ...

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906338.aspx
http://www.unofficialvista.com/article/224/revisiting-unsigned-drivers

2) The only functionality that is not yet ported to NDIS6 is IP fragment 
handling. That means that fragmented packets that match divert rules ( 
IKE or IPsec ) may not be handled correctly. For IPsec transport 
packets, you can work around this by lowering the MTU when using virtual 
adapter mode. Users of direct adapter mode will probably need to wait 
until the missing support is added.

3) The route handling code has an ugly hack in it to support Vista at 
the moment. This needs to be cleaned up but things should still continue 
to function normally. For anyone who is curious, take a look at this 
excellent blog entry http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=59 for more details. I 
don't use his elaborate hack but a simpler brute force method as a stop 
gap measure.

Thats pretty much it. The next release should see more testing and 
improvements. The amount of code that remains to get the Vista port on 
track is actually quite minimal and should be committed within the next 
day or so. Of course there were lots of other changes that went into 
this release as well. Please see the change log available from the 
client download pages for more details.

http://www.shrew.net/?page=download

Lastly, I wanted to make an announcement concerning my personal schedule 
and future development. As of today, I have concluded all long term 
contract work obligations for the next 8 months and am committed to full 
time development of Shrew Soft VPN products. This means there will be a 
much higher pace of development between now and September. During this 
stretch, we should see 2-3 major releases, several minor releases and 
the introduction of signed WHQL certified drivers for the Windows 
platform. The only gap I have scheduled will be a much needed vacation 
during the March-April time frame. If any Shrew Soft users living in 
Japan or Taiwan feel like buying me a beer on my travels, I certainly 
won't object :)

Thanks again. Testing and feedback are very much appreciated.

-Matthew



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