In order to test the impact of running a specific application over our WAN, we put together a basic test. We connected two Win2000 machines together via their serial ports and set the speed to 115Kbs and then connected one of the machines to our network via a 100 Mb HD. We then started the application on the machine with the 100 Mb connection and it took 13s to start. We then went to the machine that was connected to the network via the serial port on the machine with the 100 Mb connection and started the application and it only took 6s to start. Obviously, this was not the results we had expected.
I disabled the serial connection and enabled fast ethernet on the machine that had previously only connected to the network through the other machine and tried to run the app again and got 13s again. I put a sniffer on the hub and ran through the original test again. The LAN connection stayed at 13s and the WAN connection stayed around 6s. I found in the sniff that packet exchange stayed slow but steady, fully using each second, from the WAN connection. When ran from the PC with the LAN connection, there would be a flurry of activity for a couple hundred ms and then there would be an extended period of inactivity for as long as 500-600 ms effectively wasting most of the second. I have checked for duplex and collision problems, but they look fine.
I am completely stumped at this point as to what could be causing this issue. Any suggestions\thoughts\solutions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Mike
I disabled the serial connection and enabled fast ethernet on the machine that had previously only connected to the network through the other machine and tried to run the app again and got 13s again. I put a sniffer on the hub and ran through the original test again. The LAN connection stayed at 13s and the WAN connection stayed around 6s. I found in the sniff that packet exchange stayed slow but steady, fully using each second, from the WAN connection. When ran from the PC with the LAN connection, there would be a flurry of activity for a couple hundred ms and then there would be an extended period of inactivity for as long as 500-600 ms effectively wasting most of the second. I have checked for duplex and collision problems, but they look fine.
I am completely stumped at this point as to what could be causing this issue. Any suggestions\thoughts\solutions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Mike