help identify the bottleneck!

muzikool

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The company I work for has a corporate office and a manufacturing plant that are separated by about 3 miles. All servers are located in the corporate building. Our issue is with the amount of time it takes to pull larger files across the line from the plant. Chances are good that we are using up the bandwidth on the line (I think it's a T1), but we have to somehow prove that in order to justify upgrading the line. If that's actually not the bottleneck, then we need to figure out what it is.

Any suggestions on some kind of software tool that will give this type of information? I figure it has to be something that tracks the packets from point to point.
 
Some are NT Server and some Server 2003. Most of the large files that we transfer, such as application installs, are on a snap file server.
 
What kind of Snap Server?
Here at CENTCOM we use FAS250s and FAS270s for smaller sites...

OR... it could be tcp/ip problem you could try changing your TCP/IP stack seetings to allow for the largest packets possible. BUt you have to do this at botht the sending and recieving ends between servers.

As for checking how much bandwidth we are using we use E-health software, I don't remember the exact name.... I will look it up and repost later
 
Last edited:
mlakrid said:
What kind of Snap Server?
Here at CENTCOM we use FAS250s and FAS270s for smaller sites...

OR... it could be tcp/ip problem you could try changing your TCP/IP stack seetings to allow for the largest packets possible. BUt you have to do this at botht the sending and recieving ends between servers.

As for checking how much bandwidth we are using we use E-health software, I don't remember the exact name.... I will look it up and repost later

We have a Quantum 1000 series Snap Server.

We don't actually have servers at the other location, just at the corporate site. Would changing the TCP/IP stack still apply in that case?

I'd like to know what the E-health software is. Do you use it yourself? The monitoring software I've looked at looks extremely complex... kind of intimidating. :)
 
T1 lines used to be what is now considered very slow even by home broadband standards. Whilst my knowledge of this is now many years out of date I would if I were you ask your service provider what the actual download and upload speeds actually are as they are supposed to be guaranteed, 24/7/365 for this type of connection. Originally these were supposed to be near the backbone speeds of the supplier (now up in the gigabyte range) and were never shared with anyone, but I have been lead to believe in recent years that “contention ratios” now are applied to T1 connections installed by telephone suppliers even using dedicated lines that you have paid for so your connection could actually be slower than an 8meg broadband connection with a contention ratio of 50:1 (common) in a residential area. These are also very expensive models to use just to transfer data, better off installing five more phone lines and aggregating ordinary broadband using local peer-to-peer technology which is readily available and free-ish.

Skype uses such technology in its products albeit for another purpose but it’s just as valid and cost next to nothing, well nearly.

Old T1 connections are not worth the paper they are written on as they are actually slower then most recent 2 Meg home broadband connections re-negotiate.

:)
 
dave holbon said:
T1 lines used to be what is now considered very slow even by home broadband standards. Whilst my knowledge of this is now many years out of date I would if I were you ask your service provider what the actual download and upload speeds actually are as they are supposed to be guaranteed, 24/7/365 for this type of connection. Originally these were supposed to be near the backbone speeds of the supplier (now up in the gigabyte range) and were never shared with anyone, but I have been lead to believe in recent years that “contention ratios” now are applied to T1 connections installed by telephone suppliers even using dedicated lines that you have paid for so your connection could actually be slower than an 8meg broadband connection with a contention ratio of 50:1 (common) in a residential area. These are also very expensive models to use just to transfer data, better off installing five more phone lines and aggregating ordinary broadband using local peer-to-peer technology which is readily available and free-ish.

Skype uses such technology in its products albeit for another purpose but it’s just as valid and cost next to nothing, well nearly.

Old T1 connections are not worth the paper they are written on as they are actually slower then most recent 2 Meg home broadband connections re-negotiate.

:)

While I totally understand what you are saying here... I would like to point out that the FCC keeps tabs on ISPs who lease T1s and larger... reason being that in the near past many ISPs were guaranteeing T1 speeds when in fact they were doing nothing more than leasing a T3 for example and giving small businesses an FT1. Whats the difference you ask? Very simply the "F" represents Fractional so while a real T1 is 1.544 Mbps a fractional could be one or more of the available 24 channels.

Its NOT legal to do so, and many ISPs were forced out of business, I would like to think that this is not the case for Muzikool... :speechless:
 
Cablenut. (Connection adjustment)

Clock a transfer and do it a few times.
 
First off do the math:

A T1 line typically is 1.5mbits per second, 0.72 x 1500000 / 8 = 150kBytes/sec. (0.72 is the ethernet protocol efficiency)

That is standard DSL speed, I pay $50/month for it. Commercial DSL around here is 3 mbits per second and about $150/month. 1.3 or even 3 mbps is totally inadequate for an industiral environment. Opening a 10 mByte drawing file takes 66 seconds assuimng no one else is using the bandwidth (two users, someone surfing the porn sites, downloading mp3's, etc). That sucks! And 10 mbytes is not large for an industrial database or a drawing package.

Your home network is a minimum of 10mbps or more likely 100mbps and heading to 1 gig. Tell the cheap ass bastards you work for to get their technology out of the stone age and upgrade.

If they're too cheap, an alternative would be to get an RF or LASER link set up. More up front but cheaper in the long run.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
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