|
|
Possible Networking Problems and Solutions
This article is based on an article by Granite
Bear Development, and is included here with permission. Additional
information supplied by various installers and supporters, and sourced
from various official web sites.
Note : The problems
and solutions discussed here are the result of many installations,
and situations. Although we try and ensure this page is kept
up to date, the plethora of versions and patches of Windows,
and the Network servers is such that we do not guarantee the
accuracy of these notes. Use these suggestions at your own
risk.
When you are running TNA 2000 on a Local Area Network (LAN)
then you may encounter some problems. This document covers some
of the more common problems encountered, and their solutions.
NOTE : The suggestions,
and solutions presented here deal with the Operating System
itself. Do not make changes to the operating system without
first consulting your System Administrator.
- Windows NT users : Are you on service pack 6 instead of
service pack 6a or another service pack?
If so, expect lots of problems. Microsoft has acknowledged
that service pack 6 broke a lot of things network-wise. You
can get service pack 6a at their site or you can go back to
service pack 5, either of which is stable. In addition, do NOT
mix service packs on different NT machines on your network.
In other words, run all your NT machines on service pack 5 or
on service pack 6a, but not a mix of both service packs.
- Is your network slow when using a mapped drive letter?
If the computer has both TCP/IP and NetBEUI (network protocols,
similar to different spoken languages). TCP/IP for the Internet
and NetBEUI for the local network. TCP/IP is the default protocol.
When connecting to a mapped drive after some idle time, the
computer tries to connect first over TCP/IP and times out. Then
and only then it tries the NetBEUI connection. Go to the Control
Panel > Networks > Bindings. Make NetBEUI as the default
protocol. Better yet, remove NetBEUI.
- Is your network slow when using a mapped drive letter?
(part 2)
Is the drive mapped to the main computer's drive or to a folder?
If it is mapped to a folder, you will likely see a decrease in performance,
often a quite noticeable decrease. We are not sure why this happens,
but mapping directly to the drive has been proven time and time
again to be faster. We have not discovered the reason for this,
despite extended searches of Microsoft's tech database (http://msdn.microsoft.com).
The version of the virtual network redirector that ships with some
version of Windows 95 may cause data file corruption. This
corruption is resolved by installing the following update for Windows
95. Windows 95 Virtual Redirector
Fix . The problem is described more technically in the
MS-KB article
Q174371.
Here is Microsoft's "best place to start" page for dealing
with Windows98 issues, including networking issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/highlights/w98.asp
- Windows ME (Millennium) networking
Here is Microsoft's "best place to start" page for dealing
with Windows ME/Millennium issues, including networking issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/highlights/winme.asp
Here is Microsoft's "best place to start" page for dealing
with Windows 2000 issues, including networking issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/highlights/Win2000.asp
Here is Microsoft's "best
place to start" page for dealing with Windows XP issues,
including networking issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/highlights/winxp.asp
- Windows XP running on INTEL
If you are running old, or incomplete drivers then your very fast
Intel computer behaves poorly when running XP. This is especially
evident when using TNA 2000 because of the disk-intensive nature
of databases. We recommend using the Intel
Application Accelerator as this can improve performance quite
dramatically.
The problem could be your Novell Opportunistic Locking setting.
Contact your network person for further details. How to turn
it off? Go to Control Panel -> Networks -> Novell Client
Properties -> Advanced Settings Tab -> Opportunistic Locking
and make sure this is switched off on all client Machines -
ALSO Make sure True Commit is ON at each client PC (This should
help stop data corruption)
- Mixed Novell Networks Sharing 3.x and 4.x Servers
4.x users accessing data on a 3.x server may experience overwriting
of EOF markers. The EOF is stored on the individual workstation
and not passed correctly between the two server types. Removing
the mixture of server versions eliminates this problem.
Use of the Novell client is recommended over the Microsoft client.
Also make sure that you have the best possible client for your
version of the server. Client version 3.2, or 3.22 are recommended
for Novell server versions 4 or 5. Client version 3.21 is not
recommended.
These are effectively system modal, and interfere with the TNA
2000 system. The background modules (Comms, Proceessor, Report
Engine and Network Manager) particularly don't approve of them.
Preferably disable these popups, but if that is not possible then
make sure they are set to Time-Out after say 5 seconds.
- Local drives with Novell loaded
Note that it is possible to have problems with an incorrect Novell
configuration, even if the data files are stored locally on the
C drive, although this is fairly rare.
If a computer crashes, and reboots unexpectedly, without doing
a proper shut-down then some of the files used by that workstation,
on the server, will remain "in-use". This can cause
problems for database systems like TNA 2000. If you do have a
problem then a proper shut-down and reboot is recommended. On
Windows the refresh period is fairly quick so this is not much
of an issue. On Novell it is typically longer (although you can
set it on the server...)
- Performance issues are often caused by network protocol
"bindings"
Check the following Network protocols basics:
- Make sure that your default network protocol has no bindings
to a virtual device (dialup.....).
- If you are using TCP/IP and you have dialup on this workstation,
try NetBEUI.
- Try to avoid using IPX and NetBEUI together. IPX gets confused
when you have a "chatty" NetBEUI. Removing
IPX (if you can) is strongly advised.
- If you need to examine the network further, check out
http://www.sysinternals.com/tdimon.htm to get a bird's eye
view of what's going on.
- Does the system work on some machines but seems to "think
about it" and then do nothing on others?
Sometimes your Windows doesn't have enough "files"
set in your config.sys. (Config.nt on Win NT/ W2K and XP).
Try 100 or 125. If this isn't descriptive enough, you need to
have your consultant do this for you. Sometimes having full-time
virus scanning turned on does this. Ask your virus software
vendor how to work around this OR exclude our program from your
scanner if you can.
Do you have Energy Star features on your computers? Probably
so. Power management and networking DO NOT MIX. You can have
your computers' power management features turn off and/or dim
the monitor, but DO NOT have them turn off the hard drive, network
cards etc. This will definitely cause you grief when computers
are networked. Grief = lost data
Especially check, the Network Card settings and make sure they
cannot be turned off by the Power Management.
- Database corruptions, timeouts and other troubles
Another issue is the various ways that Windows9x and NT try
to improve performance, often at the price of stability. Sometimes
these things work, other times they cause network timeouts because
they force additional file operations behind the scenes and
those file operations time out (fail). One way to turn one of
these items off is to turn off "Synchronous buffer commits".
To do this, click Control Panel, System, Performance, File System,
Troubleshooting and check the "Disable synchronous buffer
commits" checkbox.
- Database corruptions, timeouts and other troubles, part
II
Further, Windows NT users face issues caused by some performance
improvements that NT tries to implement with network applications
by 'faking' multiple use of files. Unfortunately, some users experience
file corruption because of this. This article is a bit of nerd-speak,
but your network person should take a look at it if you are seeing
"Access denied" errors on network files when they *know*
that the network permissions are set properly.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q129/2/02.asp
The topic of this article can also be the cause of database corruption
and network timeouts (drive not available messages and the like).
Another NT issue re: slow network performance with Service Pack
4, 5, 6, or 6a (Q249799)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/kb.asp?ID=249799
- Apply at least TSE Service Pack 5 and Citrix Service Pack
1 ( not Feature Pack 1)
- Increase Pagefile size and make a fixed length on Secondary
drive if available, it should be at least 1.5 times the amount
of installed RAM.
- Turn Off "License Logging service" and Terminal
Server Licensing" from the services app.
- Increase Max Registry size to 110Mb
- Make sure you have a sufficient
amount of RAM for each user. Approximately 25 megs of Ram per
user, plus 256 Megs of RAM for the OS itself.
- Terminal Server
If you have a large number of users (in excess of 15) then you
may need to increase the number of Open Files per Connection.
See MS-KB article
Q190162
If you are running on Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 or earlier then
an upgrade to at least Service Pack 3 is recommended. See
Q260910 for information on getting the latest Service Pack for
Windows 2000. See
Q272127 for information on what errors may be caused if you
don't upgrade.
- Intel CPUs & Motherboards based on Intel chipsets
Especially if
you're running Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Consider installing the Intel
Application Accelerator. This can make a massive difference
to the performance of TNA 2000 (and other applications) on this
system.
|
|
