LAN very slow

Hi

I've just adopted a network which has suddenly become very slow.
the setup is as follows

1 windows sbs 2003 server with active directory
10 pc's windows xp pro
1 netgear router for internet and dhcp

OK, here the issue the pc all have a shared folder which everyone can access, in other words everyone can work on anyone of those folders so they maybe 3 people working on the same folder at the same time. Please correct me if im wrong, if 3 people are working on the same folder at the same time they will experience slow reaction on the network. These guys work with programs like autocad,photpshop etc.

I've suggested that they get a server and move everything on to the server istead of them using the individual pcs to share the work.

Any feed back will be appreciated

your suggested is not a bad idea as every user will require a password to log in to a public folder on the server to work on any file.

autocad is a heavy application using it in a shared network your NIC speed, your cable type, processor and RAM size count a lot especially when using it in rendering processes


so you see we need a lot more information about your network and systems than you have given us

sose
practicing network engineer
nigeria

A central file server would surely help, specially if it had a Giga-ethernet interface connected to a CAT6 cable to a Gig port on your switch. However, you should investigate more onto the slowness reasons before deciding. Slowness could be caused by other reasons than contention/bandwidth. For example, two or more users accessing (writing) to a file can cause a locking and sharing violations. This some times can cause slowness.

Practically speaking:

1. Does your LAN indicator (on the system tray) shows continuously high activity at the time of the slowness?

2. Does the internet browser or other applications that access the LAN like FTP clients experience such slowness at that time?

If the answer to both is NO, then it's probably not a contention/bandwidth problem. So giving it more hardware will probably not help here. There are other things you can do in this case like using offline files or may be MS sharepoint can help in this manner too.

Hi,

PC Specs

Intel P4 2.8Ghz
1 GB Ram
150GB HDD
10/100 network card
cat 5 cables

and two laptops connecting wirelessly

Is there any tools that one can use to try and determine what could cause the problem

If the answer to both is NO, then it's probably not a contention/bandwidth problem. So giving it more hardware will probably not help here. There are other things you can do in this case like using offline files or may be MS sharepoint can help in this manner too.


offline file is a good solution as through synchronisation changes can be updated and different version of a shared document can be saved

if you are considering MS sharepoint then your wallet is at risk of getting slim , the pricing and the lincensing of 2003 server edition for more than five system is between $1500-$2000 plus the functionalities are excessive compared to your problem