Notes on running DPPP on Windows 95 - Detlef Pleiss, Aug-25-97

If your BBS runs on Windows 95, note that there are bugs in the Kernel and the
Winsocket of the first standard Windows 95 release. That version of Windows 95
will give you problems with high TCP/IP network traffic. You should at least
install Service Pack 1 for Windows 95 and the Kernel32 fix. The ISDN
Accelerator Pack again updates Dial-Up-Networking. Make sure you get the
correct updates for your language, i.e. a US-English Kernel update on a
non-US-English system will most likely give you even more problems.
With new computers now comes a new, different OEM version of Windows 95. See
Control-Panel -> System, the OEM version says version 4.00.950B there. That
version includes the named patches. You do not need to (and should not) apply
those patches to that version.
If you get "blue screen" crashes, the problem is most likely in your system
configuration and not in DPPP. Such problems have been successfully resolved
by making double sure you have all the current patches in place and/or by
reinstalling Windows95.
I still feel Windows 95 is not really fit for high TCP/IP network traffic and
even with the fixes in place I still recommend to reboot the BBS machine
regularly. Reports are DPPP runs very stable on Windows NT, so you may want
to consider moving to Windows NT for your network / BBS server. Additionally
Windows NT supports more than 10 times the number of Sockets, speak Internet
connections, than Windows 95 does. So, for a large BBS with multiple DPPP
nodes, Web and FTP server etc., you should definitely consider migrating to
Windows NT.
Please also note that there exist programs (WinNuke, Ping of Death,
SSPing) that someone out on the Internet can use to make a Windows machine
(even Windows 95B and Windows NT) crash when it is connected to the Internet.
If you get unexplainable crashes you may just be the victim of such an attack.
Microsoft has posted patches to make Windows safe against such attacks. See
http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/q168/7/47.htm
and
http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/q154/1/74.htm
DPPP itself is safe against those programs. A DPPP caller using them does not
crash anything, neither your machine nor a remote computer.
