Why is "http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt" in my proxy logs?
WSS November 8th, 2007Q: What is http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt and why is it in my proxy logs?!
A: Windows Vista includes a feature called Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI). For more information see, "Appendix K Network Connectivity Status Indicator and Resulting Internet Communication in Windows" and a snippet is below:
NCSI might communicate with a Web site to determine whether a network has Internet connectivity. A page called ncsi.txt (http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt) containing the following line of text with no terminating new line or other non-printing characters: "Microsoft NCSI". NCSI can be disabled by changing a registry setting.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:43 am
I thought you might care to know how to control these settings in more advanced ways than what Microsoft has placed on their site. I have created an ADM template for controlling this setting via Group Policy as well as have some ideas for using some other URLs for the NCSI Vista service.
http://securology.blogspot.com/2008/01/windows-vista-phones-home.html