I had a customer who’s network was constantly dropping out and having all sorts of weird issues.
Upon initial investigation it seemed that all computers were linked at 1gb and all the switches were advertised as 1gb also.
(1 was an edimax and another TP-link)
So whats going on?
To take a closer look I decided to do a throughput test using TamoSoft Throughput Tester
Horrible. It was apparent that the network despite 1GB connection doesn’t mean you are going to get anywhere near that.
So I swapped out a switch for a Draytek router, just as that’s what I had on hand at the time and just to get a proof of concept for the client to give the go ahead for new switches.
Straight away we saw a massive improvement and was more than enough to get the client to sign off on the new switches.
We changed them over the next day and has been running rock solid since.
Their internet speeds also increased dramatically also despite being ADSL2+
Anyways, file shares are now accessed nice and snappy and MYOB, well. MYOB is still MYOB, but at least its usable now.
2 Comments
Thanks for the tip to TamoSoft. Nifty little tester. I wonder why the discrepancy between TCP and UDP?
Were these smart or dumb switches? On a lightly-managed Dell PowerConnect, I once learned that I had to disable Spanning Tree (enable Fast Link) to solve connection issues. Not sure if that would affect throughput as well. http://www.mcbsys.com/blog/2010/02/gigabit-switch-spanning-tree-causes-slow-logon/. That same switch, installed in 2009, currently shows TCP throughput of 700+ Mbps on the TamoSoft tester.
Hey Mark,
They were dumb switches. So no management what-so-ever.
Not sure why on the UDP either, but its over a month later and not one complaint of slowness and dropouts.
I like that it gave a visual representation to the client so they could understand. I had a hunch that it was the switches, but because the old ones said gigabit and the computers linked at a gigabit as well, it was hard to convince them to change them.
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