network issues

mrbios · 7 Jun 2007 at 12:26

Currently the network at work is slower than a turtle on dope, in the office we have roaming profiles and local profiles, but even when we're not accessing things on the network (as far as i know our profiles only update on the server eery time we log off) we get random 10-20 second pauses where we cant do anything, normally on start menu etc (note: start menu doesnt load from the network, its completely local)

all 3 pcs in the office get these pauses at the exact same time and return to normal at the exact same time, the cabling here is REALLY weird and stupidly done and its all getting re-done into a ring network over the summer but until then im looking for suggestions to stop these pauses

things like registry tweaks to make the network stop pausing my machine, any server side things people can suggest (difficult i know as you dont know the network im on) things i could check for in the start menu (i havent done much with roaming profiles to know where to look for where bits are loading from really) anything anyone can think off, dont mind how small or how strange something might sound, if theres a possibility it could stop the pauses in our office that would help a great deal

currently we're so annoyed with it we're tempted to wire ourselves straight into the same switch the servers go into

but we'd prefer not to because we've got a lot of other things to do

this post probably makes me sound a bit like a network user without a clue but i just dont really know how to explain the problem we're having, i know this network like the back of my hand so dont worry how complicated your ideas may be

.... the veins in my hand are easier to trace back than the cables of this network though

Ole Ftang · 7 Jun 2007 at 15:00

I would start by setting up performance monitor on all 3 PC's to collect memory, processor and disk counters. Then when the next slow down occurs you can have a look to see if there is one thing common to all which is being hammered.

Also, is this happening at random times or at regular intervals which may coincide with a scheduled task.

K.C. Leblanc · 7 Jun 2007 at 22:48

Your switch might be dieing. What sort of server setup are you using?

mrbios · 7 Jun 2007 at 23:09

K.C. Leblanc said:
Your switch might be dieing. What sort of server setup are you using?

depends what you mean by what sort really, ill start from the beginning:

we have about 14 servers in total, brand new file server, 2 terminal servers also new, and an opteron server which is also quite new

Servers:
dc-1 controling the domain we just moved to
dc1 the old domain controller, only still up because of one of the other servers
adminserver - the last server on the old domain (waiting for a man from the council to come and sort out the finance software on tehre to move it accross)
ks3 - unused opteron server
fs1 - the brand new file server with a 1TB eonstor attached
fs2 - old server still on windows 2000
ghostcast - self explanitry, not essential to the network
sophos - low spec server used only for managing the network antivirus, very recent install, fresh build
utils - printer server (and used for storing a few of our install packages that wont fit on ghostcast)

all these servers plug into one central switch at the top of the rack, that then links up to one of the switch cabinets near by via fibrewire, fibre wire then goes to each otehr section of the school into switch cabinets and from those switch cabinets 100mb or 1gb cables go to individual classroom switchs/pcs, the worst bit about this is that everything has to come from one route (a lot of data to try and push through one cable at one time)

in the summer we're switching to a ring network, a dc in each section of the school connected together via fibre with a central filestore and the main things like start menu/profiles/policys will all load from there local dc and only the main home directorys for each student (which will be limited in size...at last...) will come from the file store in the center of the ring

so i think the problem at the moment would be the amount of data going thought that one switch, or the amount of data going through a single cable or fibre wire at once (a lot of what i think is called data crashing) which is causing the biggest slow down, but im not sure of any way of temporarily fixing this

not sure if thats what you needed to know but hopefully it might help bring some ideas from someone

mrbios · 8 Jun 2007 at 11:59

spent the past hour rewiring the switch cabinet in our office, originally had 3 switchs in it and 2 patch panels

one there were 2 connections coming into the cabinet from the server room but only one works, we had 1 connection going to one switch and one to another, then each switch had a cable going to each other and back again, for some reason the switchs were wired up in a circle :confused:

ive now removed the oldest switch and replaced it with a brand new hp one we had spare, after a few people shouting at me because there server got disconnected

D) everythings running faster than ever before and (so far at least) no slow down issues

yay