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The scenario -

I work within the Networking team and we have a user complaining that any work over the network (i.e printing/accessing shared files and folder etc.) is slow. The machine is fairly well speced for business use (4GB or RAM, decent duel core CPU) running on Windows 7. The machine flicks between apps and boots just fine. Although I haven’t seen the user yet they are complaining that the PC is fine and that it is the network that is slow. (We have this battle from time to time) nothing has changed with the network and there are a few others within the same arera as the complaining user carrying out the same task who are happy and not complaining.

I have checked the switchports and it is configured correctly as usual and there apears to be no errors or packet loss.

Anything else you can reccomend to prove it is not a networking issue?

Thanks in advance!

1 Spice up
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Is it a stack configured switch? is Jumbo frames enabled on them?

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Trying using a network monitoring tool like wireshark and set it up for port mirroring. This way you’ll be able to test the traffic coming out of the ports on your switch.

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Fahrenheit63,

No the switch itself is not stack but trunked over copper to an additional 3750 (which is in a stack) in the cab room. This is a very “temporary” (nothing moves quickly in this place) setup but has not been an issue for around 9 months until now. I will have a look into Jumbo Frame thank you.

Agreen83,

Thanks for the suggestion, I was hoping I could find a resolution without 3rd party software. I had already looked wireshark (having used it a bundle of times before) and also a bandwith/traffic monitoring tool from solar winds. These will no doubt answer my query but I thought there might have been something quick on the switches I could find. I’m sure I will head down that route.

Thank you both for the replies :slight_smile:

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Hi, You can use a network forensics tool like the LANGuardian (free for 30 days). With the LANGuardian you can see all data going to and coming from a port in your network. It will show you what the user (integration with AD) has been doing (ie. torrents, dropbox, video’s, malware, Internet access, file access, server access, applications etc.)

The LANGuardian can be installed on a physical or virtual server and gathers the data through a SPAN or mirror port on your switch. This is a unobtrusive way of collecting the data as no agents or clients need to be deployed.

Online demo: https://demo.netfort.com/main.cgi

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Could the machine be running a 100 meg card? I have trouble with one here, it will fool the switch into negotiating half duplex randomly and we start getting network write errors on a specialized software. I locked down the port to 100 meg full duplex and haven’t had write errors since.

Rule in networking is, 100 meg or less, lock down the port at the switch if you can. 100 meg does have auto-negotiation features but that was built in while fairly new and sometimes gets it wrong. Gigabit (or higher - like we will ever see that hardware?), always auto negotiate speed and duplex.

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I agree with # @Agreen83 , a network monitoring tool is needed. Whatever, give it a try.

Good luck !

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As well as looking at machine / network data, you could also confirm the actual user experience is indeed poor with Logfiller.