While Insider builds are for testing new features and changes, and these are usually announced in the changelog for such builds, often, some of these changes also come unannounced. For example, some users noticed that the new Outlook was automatically installed in the latest beta channel build. This was not disclosed in the release notes, although a Microsoft executive confirmed that this is expected behavior.

While some users will certainly find this to be an unpleasant development, Microsoft seems to be making what many will feel is a good move as well. It seems that the tech giant is making a conscious effort to improve the performance of File Explorer in Windows 11. This was also according to the latest beta channel build as well as the Dev channel build. That leaves only the canary channel but not for long as user X (ex-Twitter) and Windows Xeno enthusiast soon discovered another interesting unannounced change in that as well.

Microsoft appears to have removed several DLLs related to peer networking, such as those for distributed routing and peer-to-peer services, from the build’s System32 folder. Xeno notes that exactly a dozen such files have been removed, resulting in the termination of three such services. they to write:

Quite a few dll files removed from 25951’s System32

• drt.dll (distributed routing table)
• drtprov.dll (distributed routing table providers)
• drttransport.dll (Distributed Routing Table Transport Providers)
• Groupinghc.dll (grouping helper class)
• P2P.dll (peer-to-peer grouping)
• P2PGraph.dll (peer to peer drawing)
• p2pnetsh.dll (Peer-to-Peer NetSh Helper)
• p2psvc.dll (peer-to-peer services)
• pnrpauto.dll (DNRP Auto Service Dll)
• Pnrphc.dll (PNRP helper class)
• pnrpnsp.dll (PNRP Namespace Provider)
• pnrpsvc.dll (PNRP Service Dll)

As a result, the following services were also removed:

• Decision protocol on behalf of colleagues
• Peer grouping in the network
• Peer network identity manager

Microsoft may feel that such features are not as important in the upcoming Windows 11 23H2 update, and if that happens then the next major Windows release, commonly known as Windows 12, will also lack these P2P features.

These services are quite old at this point (two decades). As an example, Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) originated in the XP days as a solution to some of the shortcomings of DNS. Of course, this is still in the testing phase and Microsoft could bring it back again in a future build.