VPN Between 2 FVS318 horribly slow

[ekyjim]

We just finished setting up a VPN between two offices using 2 FVS318 routers, with one office on Adelphia cable, and the other on Alltel's DSL.

I can "see" both networks, and can access one from the other, but it is painfully slow. We want to print our work orders from the main office to a printer here in the shop. Also, I provide tech support for both locations, and if there's a problem with a file I would much rather grab the file, fix it, and send it back rather than driving to the other location to fix it. But the printer will usually time out before printing, and it takes almost 7 minutes to download a 7 MB file.

We are running a Win NT 4.0 server at the main office, with all other machines running XP Pro, and the shop has no dedicated server, running Win 98 SE, Win 200 Pro, and one Win XP Pro machine.

If there's any more info needed, please don't hesitate to ask. I am very new to all this, so I'm not even sure what all information is needed to fix this.

Thanks

 

[John Lewis]

How much raw bandwidth do you have available on both ends? Keep in mind that both DSL and cable are generally assymetrical, so you probably have more downstream bandwidth than upstream and you are using both sides with a VPN.

Don't take your provider's word for it, haven't had experience with either of yours but the speeds you are quoted are maximums, you may actually get much less. Try this test

http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/BandwidthUp.asp

and see what your upstream looks like from both sides.

 

[ekyjim]

I checked both ends. At the office, on Adelphia, the upload is 128 Kb/sec, and the shop on Alltel is 289 Kb/sec.
I called Adelphia and they said it should be 256 KB/sec, so I need to run some diagnostics tonight since I have to shut the network down to do it.

Thanks
Jim

 

[ekyjim]

OK, Finally was able to run tests. Adelphia had to adjust a setting they had, and now we're 256K on both upload sides. Still hasn't helped the speed on the VPN. Still can't do much of anything.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Jim

 

[mystifying]

Did you by chance ever find a solution? We are in the same situation ...down to the two fvs318's and three similar computers at the secondary location. Its too slow to use.

 

[mystifying]

Just to add to our situation, we have over 300k at the secondary location, and over 700k (both via T1's) at the main location. Please help!

 

[IfAtFirst]

ekyjim's rate of 1MB/min is similar to what we experience using Linksys routers.

We also know the upload and download rates are not the constraint. We have NetBIOS info trafficking thru the tunnel.

I'm guessing ekyjim had NetBIOS broadcasting on, if he was grabbing individual files.

We plan to see what happens if we turn NetBIOS broadcasting off, and use a WINS server at the site that is remote from where we sit.

I will try to be diligent and get back to this thread with results. First, I need to know a little more about setting up WINS servers.

 

[AlexIT]

The speed issue is a problem with assymetrical links, even running two very powerful VPN connectors in site-to-site configurations the link speed is critical.

If you are constantly moving 7MB up and down, spend more and get more upload bandwidth (or synchronous connections...2Mb SDSL costs about 299 per month around here.)

Alex

 

[doug04]

We have a VPN setup with 2 linksys's using 3/4 of a T1 line and it works relatively good. You're best off getting a package deal T1 line for both your phone system and Data and ditch the cable and dsl. They aren't worth the headaches.

 

[estone4009]

We have a very similar sittuation. We are trying to run a VPN between a Sonicwall XPRS2 and a Netgear FVS318 and it is teribbly slow. The sonicwall side is a Full T1 and the Netgear side is a 512K Down 128K up. I have a 10MB databse file that a particular program accesses. It takes a considerable amount of time. Any ideas?