New Servers Are Running Slower 1

[drosenkranz]

Hello,

I'm a programmer trying to help our network person so bear with me on this one. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

We have 600+ users.
We were running 4 Pentium 200's (32 bit) servers with Win NT4.
We replaced them with a 900 Mhz P3 and a 700 Mhz P3 running Win 2k.
We also replaced 400 of our old workstations (P166's) with 2.6 Meg XP Pro's.

Since we switched over, the network has slowed to a crawl. We had copied a 3 Mg file on the original NT4 servers and it took about 4 seconds. This same file took 7+ minutes on the new Win 2K servers. Why are we running slower???

There can be a 3 minute wait just logging into one of our apps whichused to take 2 seconds. User's are getting errors in apps because of the long delays. These apps have an excellent track record and they have NOT been changed or modified.

We have some 10 Mbs switches and some 100 Mbs but only about 100 ofour users actually run our in-house applications (database processing)software - most just use Word and email. The networkhardware remains unchanged since we upgraded the servers and workstations.

Why are we running 100 times slower if we are running faster serversand workstations ???

Thanks For Your Time,

Dave

The 2nd mouse gets the cheese.

 

[bcastner]

It is unclear to me what you did on the server side. You replaced two of four servers, or all four servers with two boxes?

In any case, on a Win2k domain this problem is almost always a combination of:

1. Autosensing failure between switch and workstation NIC; you can use this matrix for some hints as to how to force the workstation nic settings:
[tt]
Workstation Switch Result

Forced Half Forced Half Works
Forced Full Forced Full Works
Auto Auto Maybe
Forced Full Auto NO
Auto Forced Full NO
Forced Half Forced Full NO
Forced Full Forced Half NO
[/tt]

2. DNS resolution issues.

Slow logons from XP to a win2000 domain usually indicate a DNS misconfiguration issue. The whole process works very differently under Win2k as server, and very differently with XP as client, than it does under NT. While the following is not a fix-all for all AD-domain problems, it is an absolute requirement that DNS is set up correctly before it will work properly. If your DNS is not set up like this, then you will experience problems like you describe. XP differs from previous versions of windows in that it uses DNS as it's primary name resolution method for finding domain controllers: How Domain Controllers Are Located in Windows XP <

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314861>

If DNS is misconfigured, XP will spend a lot of time waiting for it to timeout before it tries using legacy NT4 sytle NetBIOS. (Which may or may not work.)

1. Ensure that the XP clients are all configured to point to the local DNS server which hosts the AD domain. That will probably be the win2k server itself. They should NOT be pointing an an ISP's DNS server. An 'ipconfig /all' on the XP box should reveal ONLY the domain's DNS server. You should use the DHCP server to push out the local DNS server address.

2. Ensure DNS server on win2k is configured to permit dynamic updates. Ensure the win2k server points to itself as a DNS server.

3. For external (internet) name resolution, specify your ISP's DNS server not on the clients, but in the forwarders tab of the local win2k DNS server. On the DNS server, if you cannot access the 'Forwarders' and 'Root Hints' tabs because they are greyed out, that is because there is a root zone (&quot;.&quot present on the DNS server. You MUST delete this root zone to permit the server to forward unresolved queries to yout ISP or the root servers. Accept any nags etc, and let it delete any corresponding reverse lookuop zones if it asks.

The following articles may assist you in setting up DNS correctly: Setting Up the Domain Name System for Active Directory <

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;237675>

HOW TO: Configure DNS for Internet Access in Windows 2000 <

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;300202>

 

[drosenkranz]

Hello bcastner,

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. Lots of stuff for us to start on Monday morning.

We have replaced all four of the P200's with the two new servers. The 900 Mhz replaced the three servers in this building and the 700 Mhz replaced the other P200. The serious users are dispersed about 50/50 between the servers but there are still about 2/3rd's of all users on the 900 Mhz server here. Still doesn't appear that we should have such awful performance. I will follow up on your suggestions. Thank you for the links too!

Thanks Again For All Of Your Time,

Dave

The 2nd mouse gets the cheese.

 

[franklin97355]

We ran into a problem where the new boxes had integrated 10/100mhz lan connections and our network was also slow after upgrading. As a test we dropped in a 3com 10/100 pci network card and the network speeds went up to where we expected them to be.

 

[drosenkranz]

Hello franklin97355,

Do you have any idea just how reliable Dell's integrated NIC cards are? We have some &quot;neigh-sayers&quot; here who insist that they (NIC cards in general) never go bad.

If I install a 3Com card, will the system automatically detect the new hardware or will I need to set/reset any jumpers on the motherboard to disable the integrated NIC.

Thanks,

Dave

The 2nd mouse gets the cheese.

 

[rockerfellerz]

If you install a new card the system will detect it, but you should disable the onboard nic in the bios just to eliminate any conflicts that may arise. You can use more than one nic though...

If you're going through Hell...keep going... (Winston Churchill)
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[jhoover]

Is it just the XP Pro boxes that are slow? We have experienced occasional very slow performance on all our XP Pro machines on a Win2k network. Our Windows 98 machines work fine. In our case it is definitely an XP problem. Have been trying for a long time to find the cause with no luck. We even upgraded our 10 MBPS hubs to 100 MBPS switches but it didn't help.