Wireless Network Manager Is Going Back To Beta
We had to make a hard decision today at Network Magic that will affect many of our customers. We decided to remove our "Wireless Network Manager" feature from our latest release and put it back into Beta for more testing. Read on and I'll give you some more insight into why we made this decision and when you can expect to get your feature back!
When we launched our recent set of improvements earlier this month, one of the great new features we added was "Wireless Network Manager". It allows Network Magic to be the primary manager of your wireless connections. We were excited to get this feature to our users as we thought it was a huge improvement over what the standard wireless connection manager in Windows XP (Known as Microsoft ZeroConfig) provides. In our (humble) opinion, we added some improved features and a better interface to manage your wireless networks.
However, we ran into one major snag: The feature didn't work with every wireless card out there.
Building a wireless manager feature is hard. You need to build a component known as an "NDIS driver", and to do this have to write what is known as kernel-level code. This is code the runs in the very low level guts of Windows and works directly with your specific hardware. Josh – one of our developers worked hard on our NDIS driver for months. In our QA lab (and in Dogfood testing), we have tested the driver with over a hundred different wireless network cards. Our confidence was high as we didn't see any show-stopper bugs in our lab.
After we launched 3.0 our support team started receiving a lot of calls from users that were having stability issues with our NDIS driver. We’ve been working hard these last few weeks trying to replicate or reproduce the problems in house, so that our development team can fix them. However, we're not having much luck. So far we have not been able to replicate a single hang or blue-screen in house. There are so many network cards out there with so many different permutations of software people have installed on their machines. It's really tricky to replicate the same environment in the lab so we can reproduce the issue. To compound things further - our NDIS driver is at the mercy of buggy 3rd party driver software. For example, we've found a few drivers that ask for an n-byte buffer to write data into but then proceed to write n+1 bytes into it. Get the wrong byte out of line and BOOM! - you blue-screen.
While this is only affecting a very small percentage of Network Magic users (~1%) at this time, the severity of the impact to those users is very painful. We think it's prudent to remove this feature from the product until we can make it bomb-proof. We can only do magic to peoples networks if we're making things better, not if we're making things worse.
Our plan is to package "Wireless Network Manager" into a separate Beta download and post it on the Network Magic Labs page. That way if users still want to try it, they can simply download the beta installer without being forced to get it as part of the base Network Magic install. Once we have had enough beta testing and have stabilized across the majority of network cards out there, we'll put the feature back into the main product release.
Of course, we're going to be very dependant on a few loyal beta users that are willing to put our Wireless Network Manager feature through it's paces and give us feedback along the way. Keep checking the Labs page and we will have more info about our Beta program!
Please post comments on this entry and let us know what you think. Did we make the right call?
Comments
Thank you for being so forthcoming and reissuing the release! I was in the 1% of people with problems but it was very severe. Thank you!
Posted by: Dusty | May 3, 2006 02:29 AM
I downloaded the update and now Network Magic will not work at all. It was working fine with my wireless. How do I get back to the 3.0 version?
Posted by: Kevin | May 4, 2006 06:17 PM
If we are now running NM v2.x...is the bottom line just stay where we are until v3. is made all better??
Jeff
Posted by: Flatch | May 4, 2006 07:50 PM
Kevin,
I'm sorry are still struggling with Network Magic. Please contact our guys in support so that we can try and help you resolve this issue as soon as possible.
Here are some useful links for you:
Network Magic support site:
http://www.networkmagic.com/support/
Open a support ticket online:
http://support.networkmagic.com/cgi-bin/pure.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php
Call Network Magic support:
Toll Free Number: 888-812-9402
Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm Pacific Time
Sat-Sun, 11am-4pm Pacific Time
(We're closed on most US national holidays.)
You can also download the previous version with Wireless Network Manager included at:
http://downloads.purenetworks.com/netmagic/release/NetworkMagicSetup.Pure0.3.0.6096.0-ship-Stable.exe
However, I suspect it will prompt for updates to the new version that we shipped without that feature.
Good Luck!
-Brett.
Posted by: Brett Marl | May 4, 2006 09:06 PM
Jeff,
I would recommend that you upgrade to the recent 3.0 build. There are a TON of other great features in there that you will benefit from, aswell as a lot of bug fixes to existing 2.x features.
As I mentioned, the latest build doesn't have Wireless Network Manager in it, so you shouldn't experience any stability issues.
Thx,
-Brett
Posted by: Brett Marl | May 4, 2006 09:09 PM
Hi - the 3.0.6120.0 version currently being offered does not install on windows xp.
I have sent you the error reports generated by windows upon installation (network magic has encountered a problem and needs to close)
I hope you can solve them so that we can try your program.
Posted by: John Aidiniantz | May 5, 2006 01:56 PM
Hi John,
Please contact our support team using the links in the comment above. The crash report you submitted actually goes to Microsoft and not to us. We will eventually get them, but it takes a while.
Our support team will be very interested to year from you, as it sounds like you have a problem unique to your config that we would like to understand better.
Thx,
-Brett.
Posted by: Brett Marl | May 5, 2006 03:01 PM
I think it was a very ethical and upstanding way to handle an unexpected problem. It would've been easy to conceal the problem from the 99% who didn't have any problems. Would that everyone were as honest in handling the unintended consequences of their actions. I hope your company prospers.
Posted by: Rick Villa | May 5, 2006 04:40 PM
I understand you're trying to do the right thing here, but please don't distribute automatic updates that disable softwaare that is working perfectly well - at least not without providing some warning to the user about what you're providing.
Posted by: Demian | May 7, 2006 07:16 AM
Transparency is always an excellent choice. Kudos on being forthcoming about these issues Brett!
~Steven
Posted by: Steven | May 10, 2006 05:22 AM
I discovered Network Magic in an issue of PC Magazine. When I read why you were going to put the wireless networking (the one I wanted)in Beta I was so impressed! A company run by people with integrity..wow. Not quite brave enough for the beta, but will definitely keep checking for the finished product.
Posted by: Lin | May 10, 2006 06:08 AM
I am running version 3.0.6121 which was packaged with my wireless router. It is running my network perfectly with no hassels (so I'm part of the 99%).
The message says that I have 23 days left to activate. If I activate will it update to the newer version without wireles support? Is there a way to keep my current version since it is working so well for me?
Posted by: Sam | May 11, 2006 12:37 PM
I had severe problems with the upgrade. Shut down network connectivity on my Toshiba laptop. Install hung up on my wife's AveraTec. Network still worked, but some of her software--totally unrelated--quit working. I had to use system restore to get everything back on like. Not running Network Magic now.
George
Posted by: George Parks | May 11, 2006 05:58 PM
Hi Sam,
Let me clarify a few details that might be of help to people.
The build of Network Magic 3.0 we shipped that included the Wireless Network Manager (WNM) feature was 3.0.6096.
A few weeks ago, we replaced the version available for download with the 3.0.6121 version that does not contain WNM.
We have not yet posted an "update required" notification to older versions of Network Magic to come and get this new build.
So what does this all mean?
1. If you were in the majority camp and connection manager was working OK for you with build 3.0.6096, then you can stay with it, you will not be prompted to upgrade.
2. If you were having problems with the 3.0.6096 build, then you can uninstall and download a new version from the site and you will get the 3.0.6121 build without WNM.
3. If you are working ok with the older build and really want this feature, but need to re-install or install on a 2nd PC then you can download the 3.0.6069 build from this link:
Download 3.0.6069 Build
We probably won't post an update required notification to older users until we ship version 3.1 in June. At this time, we should have a separate installer for the WCM available for download. (I think this answers Demian's question above also)
Sam - in your case, 'Activation' is different from installing an upgrade. You can go ahead and activate the build you have with your product key and you will not be forced to upgrade to the new build.
However, you did mention that you are already running 3.0.6121, which *is* the new build without Wireless Network Manager.
Hope this helps, and thank you for your patience!
-Brett
Posted by: Brett Marl | May 11, 2006 06:27 PM
George - Sorry to hear that.
If your are willing and have the patience, our support team would love to hear from you. We like to try and understand every instance of problems we have. Fixing a bug on your machine, might clean up some problems for another hundred users! Please follow the support contact info posted above and we'll try and get you back up and running.
Thx,
-Brett
Posted by: Brett Marl | May 11, 2006 06:30 PM
I believe you have done the right thing. However, now I just hope I can get my network to operate properly at all. It hasn't since the upgrade. Maybe you could have notified your users a little quicker some how.
Posted by: Jan | May 15, 2006 03:06 AM
I tried the previous version of network magic on both my home pc and my wireless pc, it didn't work very well so when i saw this new version of network magic i thought i would give it a try. All went well.Everything ran great until i logged off of my notebook pc and tried to log back on when nothing happened. I was unable to get my notebook logged on and my deskyop pc would not log on either. Thats when i decided to just delete all of network magic programs from both pc's. I started with my notebook first then i was able to get logged back on to the network on both pc's without network magic. I still don't now what the problem was but if you post a newer version i may try that one next. Rick!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Rick | May 15, 2006 09:05 AM
I just bought Network Magic 2.0 today at Best Buy. Thank you for being upright and forth about the issues regarding the software. I will continue to use your products!
Posted by: Andy | May 16, 2006 01:20 AM
It's fun reading all the rah-rah comments, but what you did was "hang out to dry" users who purchased the software BECAUSE of the wireless network capabilites. Then, apparently the "upgrade" link is for a version that doesn't upgrade..or at least doesn't change the version number. I posted in the support forums about this issue and was given advice to delete everything and reinstall it - why? IS the software unable to upgrade itself? And why bother installing software that doesn't have promoted features?
Your "hard decision" offers NO help for those of us who bought the software for wireless applications, nor do you offer any refund. That's pretty ridiculous.
Posted by: Jim Sliff | June 26, 2007 02:44 PM
Hi Jim,
This is actually quite an old post - from May 2006. Since posting this, we have released the Wireless Network Manager out of beta and into the shipping product.
It actually shipped in our 3.1 release a few month later and all 3.0 users were eligable for a free upgrade.
If you are running our latest 4.1 release you ought to be able to access this feature. If you are having problems - give our support team a call:
Here are some useful links for you:
Network Magic support site:
http://www.networkmagic.com/support/
Open a support ticket online:
http://support.networkmagic.com/cgi-bin/pure.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php
Call Network Magic support:
Toll Free Number: 888-812-9402
Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm Pacific Time
Sat-Sun, 11am-4pm Pacific Time
(We're closed on most US national holidays.)
Good Luck!
-Brett
Posted by: Brett | June 26, 2007 03:56 PM
Why dont you have 2 releases, one w/o and one with the manager. The one with should have a listing of wireless NIC's that are known tested and the ones that are not on there they should use the one w/o the manager piece.
Posted by: Merc | August 8, 2007 07:09 PM
Merc,
As I mention above, this is a very old post. Wireless Connection Manager has been shipping and working well for customers for over 8 months now. We're working hard on new features :)
Thx,
-Brett
Posted by: Brett Marl | August 9, 2007 07:51 PM
So I got NM4. Guess I missed the fun, but don't have the wireless feature?? Anyway, my comment is about wanting to suggest a feature. I ahve a small photo printer, an hp 370, which the software properly identified, which is connected to a pc via a usb and to a mac via bluetooth. I know you do not detect mac stuff, but what if a user could "draw" or select it in from a drop down menu. then the App might be able to monitor the connection???
Dan
Posted by: Dan Ellis | July 21, 2008 02:57 AM