10/100 network woes
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I saw that @Dashrender recently had a post about possibly upgrading to 1GbE.
One of my small business clients, HIVAC service company, has extended their office and added on to their consumer 100Mb network gear with another consumer switch and added one more PC to the lan and a few more wireless devices and 2 or 3 more IP phones.. The client claims that their network has slowed down since then.
The only thing on the network that is shared is the QuickBooks file which I have been trying to get moved to the cloud. This would be good also when she starts doing more from home.
Since the phones are 100Mb, I can see where it's possible that they are affecting the QuickBooks being shared on the network. Since adding Gigabit is not going to solve the problem, would it make sense to run two switches, one for data and one for phones?
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@technobabble said:
I saw that @Dashrender recently had a post about possibly upgrading to 1GbE.
One of my small business clients, HIVAC service company, has extended their office and added on to their consumer 100Mb network gear with another consumer switch and added one more PC to the lan and a few more wireless devices and 2 or 3 more IP phones.. The client claims that their network has slowed down since then.
The only thing on the network that is shared is the QuickBooks file which I have been trying to get moved to the cloud. This would be good also when she starts doing more from home.
Since the phones are 100Mb, I can see where it's possible that they are affecting the QuickBooks being shared on the network. Since adding Gigabit is not going to solve the problem, would it make sense to run two switches, one for data and one for phones?
I wouldn't. Run two separate networks. Have you checked where the bottleneck is? It may just be that the server QuickBooks is being shared from needs a better connection.
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There was no bottleneck until the client added more PCs and phones. The desktop running QB is 1 foot from switch, the other desktop that shares the data connection to QB is 8 foot from switch.
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I always tell people that you will pretty much never get full Gigabit speeds, but I've helped many people clear up network issues, especially with latency and throughput, by having them switch to Gigabit equipment. Assuming you have auto-negotiation on, they will still run at FastEthernet speed. However, they handle the volume of traffic better. Quickbooks files can be big but I doubt that's it. I'd go around and check to make sure you don't have a broadcast storm brewing. Make sure no one has plugged a switch into itself. With consumer stuff, you probably don't have STP, so that would cause a REAL issue.
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@technobabble distance from the switch doesn't matter. So are more users using QuickBooks or the server its on? If so the servers connection sounds like its the bottleneck. get it on a SMB Gigabit switch and then look into the other issues. You should also consider using Nic Teaming on the server.
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Also how much data is it pulling across the network? have you looked to see where anything is getting near 100% utilization. for example if more users are using it it could very well be the computer running QB doesn't have the power or the using a single HDD is causing the bottleneck etc.
Does this issue happen to users on both switches?
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I wouldn't replace anything without doing more checking. Nothing specifically says this is a network issue to me. There's a bottleneck somewhere that has shown itself since more users have been added but that is not necessarily a network issue.
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I agree with @thanksajdotcom sounds like you might have a broadcast storm or other problem caused by this new switch.
If the new switch is removed (if possible remove it for a few hours) and see if things go back to normal. From there add one thing at a time until the problem returns.
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Hard to imagine that QB is using anything close to 90Mb/s. QB at full usage and a phone going full out on a 100Mb/s link should not have any issues.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I wouldn't replace anything without doing more checking. Nothing specifically says this is a network issue to me. There's a bottleneck somewhere that has shown itself since more users have been added but that is not necessarily a network issue.
I agree, could easily not be network related, or not directly.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
Assuming you have auto-negotiation on, they will still run at FastEthernet speed. However, they handle the volume of traffic better.
Huh? Explain that one.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
Assuming you have auto-negotiation on, they will still run at FastEthernet speed.
Autonegotiate is a requirement of the GigE spec. Cisco doesn't honour this, but that is part of Cisco not being standards compliant.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@technobabble distance from the switch doesn't matter, until you start dropping packets from being too far away.
FTFY
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I'd look at the topology, see if a new bottleneck is in between the QB server and one or more of the devices attaching to it. Check for broadcast storms. Check for odd traffic from any of the new devices. Try unplugging the new stuff and see if things magically improve.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@technobabble distance from the switch doesn't matter, until you start dropping packets from being too far away.
FTFY
Well yeah..
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Assuming you have auto-negotiation on, they will still run at FastEthernet speed. However, they handle the volume of traffic better.
Huh? Explain that one.
When you have a full GigE switch, even if the connection speed auto-negotiates down to 10/100, the switches handle the traffic better. I don't know all the exact technical reasons behind it, but it's kind of like how a Ferrari and my Optima both might only be doing 75 on the highway, but the Ferrari is under a lot less strain to do 75 than my Optima. Does that make sense?
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@thanksajdotcom said:
When you have a full GigE switch, even if the connection speed auto-negotiates down to 10/100, the switches handle the traffic better.
No it doesn't. The one and only thing that makes a switch a GigE switch or a FastEthernet switch is the speed of the ports, nothing else. They can literally be the same device otherwise.
Commonly GigE switches have faster backplanes, but nothing makes this a requirement or a hard fact. It's just that faster backplanes are needed to handle the additional traffic that GigE can theoretically take. But until you have saturated a switch, the speed of the backplane is irrelevant. Latency is a factor, but a tiny one outside of iSCSI scenarios, and is a separate concern from this. FastEthernet switches might actually handle things better, depending on a number of factors.
Don't "read into" GigE. There is no magic. It's just a faster port speed, nothing else.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Assuming you have auto-negotiation on, they will still run at FastEthernet speed. However, they handle the volume of traffic better.
Huh? Explain that one.
When you have a full GigE switch, even if the connection speed auto-negotiates down to 10/100, the switches handle the traffic better. I don't know all the exact technical reasons behind it, but it's kind of like how a Ferrari and my Optima both might only be doing 75 on the highway, but the Ferrari is under a lot less strain to do 75 than my Optima. Does that make sense?
That has nothing to do with gig speeds. that's just having a better switch that has more throughput and switching speed. You could get really high switching speeds on 15yr old 100mb Catalysts switches. In fact I have one running CatOS at home (not in use) that could beat many low end gig switches in switching speeds. That's just buying a higher end switch.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
I don't know all the exact technical reasons behind it, but it's kind of like how a Ferrari and my Optima both might only be doing 75 on the highway, but the Ferrari is under a lot less strain to do 75 than my Optima. Does that make sense?
I can see what you are thinking, but it is a bad analogy. There is no stress here, it's not like an engine.
Think of it more about hauling fruitcakes. Your Optima and a Ford F150 can both haul fruitcake at 75mph. The Ford F150 can haul more for sure, but if you never haul more than twenty fruitcakes at a time, the F150 has no advantage. Neither is stressed or not. One could haul more, if you had more to haul. But until you need more capacity than the Optima, having extra capacity is just a waste.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
I don't know all the exact technical reasons behind it, but it's kind of like how a Ferrari and my Optima both might only be doing 75 on the highway, but the Ferrari is under a lot less strain to do 75 than my Optima. Does that make sense?
I can see what you are thinking, but it is a bad analogy. There is no stress here, it's not like an engine.
Think of it more about hauling fruitcakes. Your Optima and a Ford F150 can both haul fruitcake at 75mph. The Ford F150 can haul more for sure, but if you never haul more than twenty fruitcakes at a time, the F150 has no advantage. Neither is stressed or not. One could haul more, if you had more to haul. But until you need more capacity than the Optima, having extra capacity is just a waste.
And it's using more gas to get the same job done.
