Small Network - Traffic Jams due to internet use

[LTillner]

We have a small peer to peer network (using Windows 98) right now. One machine is designated as the "server" for our database application. We have DSL access to the Internet. It all runs through the same 10/100 Hub (Netgear Fast Ethernet Switch 10/100) almost all traffic is running at 100 mps. However, when everyone is in our small office (about 12 employees - 11 computers) and people are both on the Internet and using the database (our main application) the database starts crawling.

Today, I was recalculating the database and it was taking several seconds to recalc each record. I experimented and asked everyone to get off the internet, suddenly all calculations for all records/tables were completed within 2 minutes. That gave me a pretty clear understanding that it is a traffic problem.

The question is --- How can I solve it? We are looking at a new server (Windows 2000, 1.8 GHz processors (2), more ram, faster hard drives, etc) but I think I'll still have problems unless or until I can separate the database traffic from the internet traffic!

Suggestions on how to do that cheaply and easily would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Lynette

 

[jimbopalmer]

This is just a shot, what is the chance that your "server" is also running a software router for your internet gateway? then not only would it have double the internet traffic it should (one local paclet in and one WAN packet out for every packet sent) PLUS the database traffic. If this were the case, a cheap Hardware router would GREATLY reduce your bottleneck, especially if the "server" is also serving as your DHCP server and DNS resolver.

if now looks like:

DSL modem -- 'server'-- switch--other PCs

DSL modem -- router--switch-- all PCs

would take a LOT of traffic off your "server" and should be well under $100
I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[bf0x]

I recently worked on a smaller network with the same issue you just described. running windows 98, only 5 computers on this network and all went to the same PC for the database and internet sharing. the best solution I could offer is what I ended up doing for the company I worked on. and this was after the owner made me remove all the files in the database and put them on everyone's own PC. What a mess that was and did not fix the problem. The problem was and still was that his PC was acting as a gateway for the internet which really is CPU intensive. the best solution is to put a router between your DSL and the LAN. that would force everyone that was looking for the internet to go to the router only and that would keep the LAN less active. another addition to this would to replace any hub with a switch. Hubs are no more than physical connections between all ports. A switch however learns the PC's MAC address and retains the information so that the first time that you send information to the server it will broadcast out to everyone on the network, but the second time and everytime after that it would know which port it must send the information out on which will help with congestion. A cheaper solution to this but may not always work is to take a cheap not needed PC that is connected to the LAN or just another PC and to share the internet through that PC. that way the server PC is not doing both duties. I hope this helps. let me know if you would like further information on setting it up with a router connected to the DSL modem.

 

[LTillner]

We do have a Switch, not a hub, even though I called it that. It's a Netgear 10/100 Fast Ethernet Switch, most traffic runs at 100

All traffic for the internet goes to a DSL router, the "server" pc is nothing more than just one pc that can get to the internet through the TCP/IP address of the router to the DSL modem. But I could be wrong.

What type of router did you use between your switch and the DSL?

 

[bf0x]

I Will have to check what type of router is connected. It was one provided by the DSL service provider. it has 1 LAN connection and 1 WAN connection both rj-45 connections. I will check to see what kind it is this week.

 

[LTillner]

Thanks! I checked ours out this morning. We are using a Cayman Router between the Netgear Switch and the DSL Modem. So the Internet traffic is NOT using the server as the router. However, that doesn't mean the traffic isn't part of the problem.

I sent the following message to the Tek-Tips FoxPro forum, maybe it will provide some more info about what is happening:

Our Foxpro Database runs on small Peer-to-Peer network. Without any programming changes to my calculation code, the speed of running the calculations on the database has gone from a few minutes to up to HOURS.

I can't explain this. Last week, It appeared that people using the Internet was causing excess TCP/IP traffic slowing the read/write time for recalculating the tables. Now today, making sure noone was surfing the web, the recalc process was even slower. In one hour, just barely over 1000 records were recalculated.

Can anyone suggest other things I can look at to fix this? I know the code could be cleaner, but this wasn't happening 2 weeks ago with the same code.

I am using views rather than direct table access. Could my views be slowing this down to a crawl?

The server is at least part of the issue. We have had some hard drive issues and it's just an IDE hard drive so it's slow to start with. We are pursuing getting a better "server."

I guess I should be suspicious of the NIC or that another NIC in the office is clogging the network with bad packets.
Internet access is through a Caymen Router to a DSL modem and that shouldn't be the issue because the "server" PC doesn't serve as a router for internet traffic.

Any other ideas? I would greatly appreciate some input!

Thanks,
Lynette