iTunes issues

[RTHolmes]

 

[Mace2004]

REHolms, did you kill all five of the processes Tigger lists for your "after" list?  Is the after list "normal" or are the connections still excessive?

[Getback]

FYI heres another box running iTunes before FSAuto:

>netstat -an

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    0.0.0.0:135            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:445            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3389           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3689           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1027         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1028         127.0.0.1:27015        ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1032         127.0.0.1:1033         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1033         127.0.0.1:1032         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1034         127.0.0.1:1035         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1035         127.0.0.1:1034         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1127         127.0.0.1:27015        ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1128         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1129         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1130         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1131         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1132         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1133         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         127.0.0.1:1036         CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1128         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1129         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1130         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1131         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1132         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1133         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        127.0.0.1:1028         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        127.0.0.1:1127         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    192.168.10.2:139       0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  UDP    0.0.0.0:445            *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:500            *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:1025           *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:4500           *:*
  UDP    127.0.0.1:123          *:*
  UDP    127.0.0.1:1900         *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:123       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:137       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:138       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:1900      *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:5353      *:*


and after:

>netstat -an

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    0.0.0.0:135            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:445            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3389           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1032         127.0.0.1:1033         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1033         127.0.0.1:1032         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1034         127.0.0.1:1035         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1035         127.0.0.1:1034         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         127.0.0.1:1036         CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    192.168.10.2:139       0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  UDP    0.0.0.0:445            *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:137       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:138       *:*

My Gawd!!

[Tigger29]

Holy bloatware Batman!  That's a HUGE difference...

[RTHolmes]

ah I should say thats not just killing iTunes, its everything apart from stuff for AH so includes MS Update, RDP, OpenOffice, Java and a bunch of other stuff. Just a demo of FSAuto cleaning up a pretty standard XP install which happens to have iTunes on it.

AFAIK ITunes uses ports: 3689, 5353, 5354 and 27015

I use FSAutostart to kill the following:

Services:
Apple Mobile Device
Bonjour Service (now called Rendezvous)
iPod service

Programs:
AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe
iTunes.exe
iTunesHelper.exe

[Skuzzy]

Here is what my stock Windows Xp install looks like.

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    0.0.0.0:135            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:445            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:139            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:1026           0.0.0.0:139           ESTABLISHED
  UDP    0.0.0.0:445            *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:500            *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:1027           *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:1038           *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:4500           *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:123            *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:137            *:*                   
  UDP    0.0.0.0:138            *:*                   
  UDP    127.0.0.1:123          *:*                   

[Babalonian]

FYI heres another box running iTunes before FSAuto:

>netstat -an

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    0.0.0.0:135            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:445            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3389           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3689           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1027         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1028         127.0.0.1:27015        ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1032         127.0.0.1:1033         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1033         127.0.0.1:1032         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1034         127.0.0.1:1035         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1035         127.0.0.1:1034         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1127         127.0.0.1:27015        ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1128         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1129         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1130         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1131         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1132         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1133         127.0.0.1:5354         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         127.0.0.1:1036         CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1128         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1129         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1130         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1131         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1132         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5354         127.0.0.1:1133         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        127.0.0.1:1028         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:27015        127.0.0.1:1127         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    192.168.10.2:139       0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  UDP    0.0.0.0:445            *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:500            *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:1025           *:*
  UDP    0.0.0.0:4500           *:*
  UDP    127.0.0.1:123          *:*
  UDP    127.0.0.1:1900         *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:123       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:137       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:138       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:1900      *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:5353      *:*


and after:

>netstat -an

Active Connections

  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    0.0.0.0:135            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:445            0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    0.0.0.0:3389           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1032         127.0.0.1:1033         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1033         127.0.0.1:1032         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1034         127.0.0.1:1035         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:1035         127.0.0.1:1034         ESTABLISHED
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  TCP    127.0.0.1:5152         127.0.0.1:1036         CLOSE_WAIT
  TCP    192.168.10.2:139       0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
  UDP    0.0.0.0:445            *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:137       *:*
  UDP    192.168.10.2:138       *:*

That's normal imo, but yeah, bad.  My wife has managed a couple of times to tickle iTunes in the right way that it will kick every other computer connected on my network off, including mine .  A friend suggested I netstat it once when it was acting up again, and I stopped counting at around line 50.  Apple... *shakes his head*.  Thanfully her ipod broke over a year ago and the Zune she replaced it with seems to be engineered much better since I've never had to get involved with it. 

[Skuzzy]

Ever seen what Steam does to a NAT table?  It ain't pretty. 

iTunes does the same thing.  It can flood a NAT table to the point where no other computer on the LAN can get access to the network.

At least Steam can be turned off.  Apple loves to let all this stuff just pigpile in Windows.  Quicktime is no better.

Apple is fortunate most people do not know how things work or how they are supposed to work.

[RTHolmes]

the only "network killing" i've heard iTunes be responsible for was in fact due to a crappy driver for intel wireless hardware. any other info on that?

given what the software achieves its pretty amazing there arent more problems with it, I mean what other widely used (and free, remember) PC software does: audio en/decoding, music library organisation, syncing attached hardware devices, downloading and updating firmware on attached hardware devices, online ordering, audio and video streaming from/to other networked PCs, audio and video streaming to networked hardware etc...

I'd say Apple are very unfortunate that most people dont know how things are supposed to work, if consumers were more clued up Apple would have most of the market share and MS would have gone bust years ago.

[Skuzzy]

Yes, but we are all stuck with Microsoft, like it or not.  Apple is an option and until they take 50% of the marketplace, they will always be an option.

Most people are not aware of how things should work, but there are only a handful of companies that actually prey on that.  Apple, Roxio, Norton, just to name a few.  Whether it is done intentionally, or by design, can only be speculated.

Freeware has always been a risk.  Yet, there are some very good freeware/shareware programs out there.  Look at Foxit.

I could care less what iTunes can do and I am not impressed with it.  The cost is far too high, even when it is free.

I am not going to be drawn into an Apple versus PC war here.  Apple's track record with PC based software is what it is.  iTunes hurts our game performance.  It hurts connections to our servers.  It is a huge resource, which should NOT be running all the time.

[fudgums]

ok How do I get rid of it?

[RTHolmes]

you dont have to, if you like using it you keep it and kill it with everything else unecessary when u want to play AH.

iTunes hurts game performance - well yes it does. any software running which isnt necessary for AH will hurt performance.

iTunes hurts connections to your servers - no it doesn't (unless youve found evidence of iTunes attempting connections to the AH servers). although it may effect networking at the client PC end. any server software running which isnt necessary for AH will effect network performance.

I'm sorry to bang on about this but iTunes is getting demonised here when its no different from any other software running on your PC. On a marginal system would you want to run eg. AV scanning, SBS web serving and Real Networks streaming server while rendering some video from After Effects at the same time as AH? Of course not. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't install any of these apps on the machine, just means you should set up FSAuto or an alternative to killemall before firing up AH.

[Skuzzy]

It does indeed hurt connections to the servers due to the number of open network threads it runs.  On many client systems it can cause problems with connections to other services.  We also tested it here on a pretty high end system, and it indeed was causing warps and stutters in the game.

I cannot count how many systems I have had to deal with whose connection reliability was negatively impacted by iTunes running in the background.

Most Windows processes simply run the message loop when they are not the primary application.  iTunes runs as if it is the primary application all the time.  There is a difference.  It has open "listeners" running which will respond to an asynchronous network event.  That is just wrong.

You can defend it all you like.  If you like software that assumes it will be the only application running on the computer, then iTunes is for you.  If you like software that always has asynchronous network connections open to the Internet, which is a potential major security violation, then iTunes is a good one.  If you like software that should not be running all the time, to run all the time, then iTunes is a good one.

If it was a well behaved application that did not adversely affect what I do for a living, I would not care one way or another.  I guess we could change Aces High II to always hold a connection open to the Internet and keep our resources constantly loaded, even when the application is not needed.  If iTunes can get away with it, then why not?

[RTHolmes]

It has open "listeners" running which will respond to an asynchronous network event.  That is just wrong. etc...

you just defined a server, which is one part of what iTunes is. how is that different from any other server app?


if you ran the example software suite I mentioned earlier I guarantee AH will warp and stutter too. surely its better to advise that for best performance you run eg. FSAuto and kill everything unecessary (iTunes, After Effects, Bittorrent whatever...)

[Skuzzy]

Windows Vista/XP was never designed to be used as a server platform operating system.  It does not have the security features required to be a competent server OS.  It does not have the network stack design to handle being a server.  The OS's were not designed to do this task.