Network Slowing Down- any recommended monitors? 3

[Najemikon]

Hi,

One of our customers is having one of those awkward problems where his perfectly ordinary Windows 2000 network has started to slow down. The cabling has been checked & is fine.

I think the best way forward is to run some sort of monitor on the PCs to check for dropped packets, unusual loads, etc. Has anyone got any recommendations for this sort of stuff? Especially freeware! And if so, should it be run on all PCs or just a couple or even just the server?

Many thanks in advance!

 

[gargouille]

Maybe you'll find something here you can use:

http://www.sysinternals.com/

 

[dcwtechmech]

Is thia a server client network or a peer to peer network? Let everything that have breath praise the Lord.

 

[ceh4702]

One way to test a network is to use the ping command to see what kind of response you get. From a DOS WINDOW PING [IP NUMBER] OR [COMPUTER NAME]. The default is 4 pings sent out. It will tell you the response time.

Sometimes on a firewall you have to block ICMP messages or the network will slow down. Networks are hard to diagnose when problems start up. You have to know how everything is set up. It could be something as simple as a full hard drive or equipment damaged by lightning or a router that has had a power loss and lost its configuration information which sometimes happens after a lightning storm or during a loss of electrical power. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[badmonkey1313]

I have found that if you uninstall the network (delete all network protocols), reboot the system, install the protocols, and reboot again, the network will speed up again. I haven't figured out why this works, but it does.

 

[Najemikon]

Oooh, Badmonkey that's a bit drastic! Sorry, I should have explained- it is actually quite a large server/client based network. This problem has been occuring now for some time & we're all just at a loss.

Ping has been run some time ago (didn't give us anything solid to go on), but you're right to suggest it as it's pretty essential. I used it a while back to diagnose a problem with a switch actually on our network. If you use the continuous command, rather than let it just do the basic four, you can use it to easily see timing issues. A faulty port on the switch was losing the connection about every 10 pings.

This is a more subtle, long term problem that we just can't narrow down to one PC, though we're pretty sure that's all it will be. We need something that will give us a report of performance say over a couple of hours. There's plenty of SW available, but all very expensive, that can display the activity of all the IPs it finds.

Thanks for the link Gargoille; looks like a useful site even if it can't do what I need on this occasion. I'll report back either way.

Thanks again for your responses.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Are you using hubs or switches? What is the speed of the network (10BaseT or 100baseT)? What has been added lately to the network? What about streaming audio or IM? Downloading of files? Virus Updates? Is QoS on? Any extra protocols used? Anything broadcasting that shouldn't be?

These are a few questions I though of at the top of my head. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[dcwtechmech]

I agree with Iseries the poet but I would like to look at and rule out those issues one at a time. My first thought would be sharing issues but again I want to rule them out one at a time and with of course as much info as posible. Let everything that have breath praise the Lord.

 

[Najemikon]

Well the network uses a switch & is 100BaseT. They don't really do any file downloading or multimedia. Virus updates are done automatically through a dedicated mail server & nothing unusual or unrequired in protocols. Was QoS available on Windows 2000? If so, I'll have that checked.

These users are what you might term as 'low-end' in that they use minimal bandwidth. They all have pretty up-to-date out of the box PCs. Shared data is all on the server- they don't share local drives.

The best bet so far is something broadcasting that shouldn't be; Nothing as far as we can tell has been added recently, hardware or software, but then you know users! "Oh when you asked, I never thought online Unreal Tournament would cause a problem...", etc. Gargouilles link led me to a nice little prog called TCPView, which should show us exactly what each PC is doing.

 

[dcwtechmech]

I remember once on a novell 3.11 network there was a single card (NIC) that was broadcasting a huge amount of noise on the network. It was before smart hubs (switches)I think... The way to troubleshoot it was to take the node offline or system down one by one until it was found. Also I have a great piece of software that should be able to track the change if this is the problem. Now if I can remember to find it. It's a demo but it mayu help. I'll get the name and maybe you can download a version.
PS.
With 2000 server do you have to clean up the system like you do with all other MS stuff. (temp files, Explorer etc..)
Let everything that have breath praise the Lord.

 

[ceh4702]

Maybe you should hire a consultant that you can call from time to time for these types of problems. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Najemikon]

Problems not completely solved yet, but we have found the PC at fault. It has several problems that could be causing extra load on its performance. This in turn could be affecting the network. Certainly this PC simply being powered off speeds everything up!

Its main fault is caused when it's powered on without the Officejet printer attached to it being powered on first- blue screens, failed startup, etc. HP know about this, but don't have a fix. This has caused some knock on issues, so the whole thing is going to be reinstalled.

Anyway, thanks fro all your help, especially Gargoilles link which has some great little utilities...