Michael Surkan, Microsoft’s Program Manager for Networking and Devices, has asked me to post a link to his survey to gain customer input on some networking features Microsoft is considering in the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn):

“The Microsoft network product team is investigating ways of resolving peer-to-peer connectivity problems in Longhorn, and we would like to get customer feedback to help validate some of the design proposals.

Today, there are many situations where users are unable to run such functions as remote assistance, voice/video conversations, and many other peer-to-peer functions because of firewalls, NATs and other network configuration problems. Our goal is to build networking technology into the operating system that will overcome many of these problems, allowing these peer-to-peer scenarios to ‘just work’.

This survey outlines some of the proposals for resolving these connectivity problems, and asks for feedback on them. We would love to get the opinions from a wide range of users, and markets (e.g. consumers, large IT departments, etc) since this would have implications for everyone.”