Server 2008 slow networking/app prob

[mmomega]

I know the topic isn't to descriptive but here goes...

basically the network is Server 2008 - quad core, 4gb ram, dual Seagate cuda's in RAID1 on onboard controller, enough to run server 08 quickly

10 workstations all vista business - e8400's, 2gb ram, sata 3.0 hdd's

all latest drivers, bios, etc in case people have questions if things were up to date.

Now to the problem, we run a health care program that has the server side program and basically thin client programs that read/write back and forth to the server from the workstations.

When we were on SBS 2003 and XP machines, the clients would read/write back and forth to the server almost instantly (which is what youd expect), since the upgrade to "faster" computers and gigabit LAN there is a good 10-20sec lag in accessing different pages within the program.

Acessing the program on the server itself is basically isntant, connecting remotely to the server is also very quick.

The only other problem is file transfer speeds.... if i drag and drop a file from the server to my workstation I am getting approx. 1-2MB tops.

Any ideas?

[leen2]

While I am not an expert on this, a number of things to note:

1. Windows Server 2008's network stack includes the ability to tune the network performance of TCP communications to your needs. Out of the box it is fine, just not always optimal depending on your network. I would investigate TCP performnce tuning of the network stack if you think the server end is where the problem lies.

2. 64-bit versins of Windows Server 2008 benefit from the additional memory addres space and are able setup larger pagesd and non-paged memory address pools that can facilitate faster network performance.

3. We have found an issue with the way Internet Explorer in Vista uses a small window size to negotiate TCP packet transfers, even if you have tuned the OS to use larger window sizes. Internet Explorer in XP does not suffer from this, if your app uses Internet Explorer, try testing it from an XP client against the Windows server 2008 server to see if the issue is in your client. This only relates to IE, Windows Explorer in Vista is unaffected.

4. Use standard troubleshooting to find the cause, that means go back to the original solution that works well and change 1 thing at a time and retest after each change to isolate where the problem is. You could find it is something as simple as the network ports on your switch set to auto negotiate speed and duplex and you server's NIC card is negotiating down to a Half duplex and 10MB.

5. Use a program like Wireshark to take packet captures and look at what is happening at the packet level, etc...

[mmomega]

the app doesn't use IE at all. Also the same prob happens on the 2 XP stations we have left. Just seems like when app itself is trying to read/write back to the server the slowdown occurs.

ex. you open the app on the work station it states it is locating server, creating connection, then connects and opens the app. (This part is quick like it was on the old network)

-- if you are used to Office 2007 the app somewhat resembles the ribbon type format of office--

Main app opens, you click the sphere, that opens a drop down menu for the different things you do, for us.... Patient Enrollment, Scheduling, Insurance Verification, etc.

Say I click patient enrollment it then takes a good 10-20 seconds to open that corrosponding window. Whereas on Server 03 and XP it was practically instant. Do the same action on the server side, instant.

Same thing after you enter all the information and save or close the window..... takes 10-30sec or longer to save and close.

10-30sec may not seem like a huge deal but if you think after doing this for 50-60 patients a day or more thats a good 30mins or more of sitting a waiting x 10 employees.

Trying to resolve this myself and with help from the community would be nice since tech support charges $6/minute and basically knows their App and not alot about networking or the server itself and the last time one of our IT guys screwed up cost $4k in tech support.

On another note I tried disabling the server 08 and Vista TCP auto tuning, disabling IPv6 etc with little to no change.

The downloading other files straight from the server and only getting 1MB/s has me stumped as well. but I'll go back and check the router and server NIC when I get back to the site.

thank you for the suggestions and i'll post back if any changes and what they were just in case someone else stumbles across the same prob.

[Tripredacus]

I had recently completed a 3 month SR with Microsoft regarding our server, and its slow speeds on traffic going TO the server.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=818425

In addition, you can try disabling the Link Layer Topology Mapping on the Vista machines and the server. This can be done with Group Policy.