Re: Company network slowdown
- From: "Pierre" <rainsford@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 14:09:00 +1000
Jeff has it right again except for one part. Gigabit NICs are cheap and you
get what you pay for. having been intimately associated with a similar type
of installation, we ended up throwing out 23 Netgear GA311 NICs and a
variety of other breeds. The majority of them just cannot reliably stand
intense high volume traffic as occasioned by hundred megabyte file transfers
running 24/7. They randomly and intermittently buckle resulting in a few
more retries which takes precious bandwidth. Commercial installations
usually run at sub 5 or 10% network utilisation. Graphics and imaging sites
often run at 80%+ utilisation for minutes on end.
After a lot of experimentation and testing of various NICs, we replaced all
the NICs on the network with genuine Intel Pro series NICs which were a bit
dearer and have never had a problem in the three years since and it flies.
And no, I am an independent contractor with no interest or shares in Intel!
Peter
"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0r07i1t243545j0jur8971jroso4usvkl3@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:08:32 GMT, "DanR" <dhr22@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >Yes, I should have provided more information about our network hardware.
Problem
> >is I don't really know.
>
> Fine. However you should have some clue who's got performance
> problems.
>
> >We are a production company with 6 Avid sweets, 2 audio
> >sweets, one online editing room and an interactive department.
>
> That's Suite's, not sweets.
>
> >We don't have any
> >IT people per se... but have designated one of our coders to be
responsible for
> >the network.
>
> I can't tell for sure but if you have 50 boxes, you really should get
> someone qualified to do the troubleshooting. It's easy enough to plan
> and setup a new network. It's requires experience to troubleshoot an
> existing network.
>
> >He's a sharp guy and seems to know his network jargon. And he is
> >new on the job having taken over the network from someone who left.
Because I'm
> >fairly handy with computers in general
>
> Well, ok.
>
> >I'm helping the boss think through our
> >move to giga-bit and the coincidental network / Internet slowdown we have
been
> >experiencing.
>
> Ok, so it's an *INTERNET* slowdown, not a server to client or render
> farm slowdown. That's not going to change at all by going to gigabit.
> You're bottlenecked at 1.5Mbits/sec at the T1 and that's your limit.
> Do the traffic monitoring to see what and how much is moving in and
> out of the T1. Don't be surprised if you see worms, file sharing, and
> garbage.
>
> >The main reason to go giga-bit is to move very large files around
> >on the network. (video files in the giga-Bytes) And because of the
Internet
> >slowdown of late we are talking and wondering if that will improve
Internet
> >throughput.
>
> That's very different from an *INTERNET* slowdown. Most render farms
> are interconnected with gigabit ethernet. The big boxes have multiple
> gigabit cards to distribute the load. I got to play with one RAID
> server with 4 cards and a load balancer. Yeah, for in house traffic,
> gigabit is great.
>
> However, you still have to know if you're making an improvement. For
> that you need numbers, measurements, calculations, and pretty graphs
> to impress the boss. I suggest MRTG for traffic monitoring.
>
> >Obviously it will be a fairly expensive endeavor to run all new
> >cable throughout the building and get new NICs.
>
> Baloney. CAT5e will do gigabit just fine. You don't really need
> CAT6. Keep the cable lengths down to less than 300ft. Avoid long
> flexible ethernet CAT5 jumpers. Borrow a cable certifier and test
> your wiring. New gigabit NIC's are cheap. Netgear GA311 is about
> $20. I recently upgraded a law office with gigabit everything. It
> was a barely noticeable improvement. You only notice an improvement
> if your existing 100baseTX system is saturated. Do the measurements
> and you'll know for sure. If lazy, use Windoze XP Perfmon to check
> client network utilization.
>
> >So we're also thinking about
> >only doing new giga-drops at some work stations and not the entire
network.
>
> Fine. Draw the topology map as I suggested and see how many boxes in
> between the gigabit NIC's need to be upgraded.
>
> >All
> >new drops will be home runs and if we do the entire building that means
all home
> >runs.
>
> Home runs to what? I smell a big building with cable lengths more
> than 300ft which will require some intermediate boxes. Home runs
> aren't always best.
>
> >But there's a but and that is that we are considering fiber to the upper
> >floor because of long runs.
>
> How long? If you don't know, guess.
>
> >So that is a bit of background and I'm just trying to learn what I can so
I can
> >ask intelligent questions and better understand what the heck is going
on.
>
> Well, ok. I think I've given you a good start on the buzzwords. So
> far, you've made the decision to spend some money, considerable time,
> and a bit of guesswork, in order to upgrade a network that you don't
> have a clue where it's running slow, why it's running slow, or whether
> you have a traffic problem. Also, this has nothing to do with
> wireless so you're asking in the wrong newsgroup. To insure that
> you'll get no useful answers, you've supplied not one single name,
> number, model number, distance, or accurate description.
>
> >I'm
> >basically a home network guy and that is the extent of my network
hardware
> >knowledge.
>
> Well, you're learning. Business LAN's are very similar except that
> reliability is a much bigger issue than performance or features. Your
> real task will be to fix whatever problem you can't seem to describe
> accurately, and do it without breaking anything else or having 50
> irate graphic artists screaming at you. That's quite different from
> home networking.
>
> >I appreciate the help so far provided. Thank you all.
> >Jeff... when you say "A T1 (DS1) is 1.544Mbits/sec. You'll get about
> >1.3Mbits/sec thruput in both directions." Does that mean that just one
> >workstation at a time will see that throughput?
>
> No. The bandwidth is distributed roughly equally among the
> workstations.
>
> >If 10 computers / workstations
> >are at the same time doing a Microsoft update for example... are they
sharing
> >that 1.3Mbit bandwidth?
>
> Yes. In theory, each workstation will get 1/10th the incoming
> bandwidth. MS Update is a bad example because of the way they do
> bandwidth limiting, but that's a diversion and not part of this
> discussion.
>
> >Are they each then downloading at 130Kb. Does it work
> >that way?
>
> Yes.
>
> >Also curious about one of our people who constantly listens to
> >Internet radio streams. Any harm there?
>
> No. I do that in the office. Screaming audio is from 24Kbits/sec to
> about 128Kbits/sec. Compared to your 1500Kbit/sec, the screaming
> audio listener only eats about 8% of your incoming bandwidth.
> However, if you're saturating the T1 with other traffic (do the
> sniffing), then that last 8% might be fatal.
>
>
> --
> Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
> Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
> Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.
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