Help needed for network design setup and implementation

Lan2wan,

Is the network 'slow' for all workstations or just your W2K3 server ?

Assuming the network slowdown is a general problem throughout the network, I'd suggest installing a packet sniffer at a workstation and examining the time response to your web queries. This will give you a good indication on what the problem might be.

If the problem is only at the server level, then you'd need to proceed with the installation of the packet sniffer directly on it.

Providing more details will certainly help us find the root of the problem and suggestion a solution. Closing, you can download ethereal ( www.ethereal.com/ ) in case you do not have any packet sniffer in hand!


Cheers,

Another thing to check in addition to Chris' recommendations is your DNS setup. I know you've gone over this before, but you could check that all the workstations are using your local DNS server first. A useful tool I use for quickly checking settings on my workstations is BGInfo from www.sysinternals.com . It gives you the option of adding
selected system settings to the Desktop background image. You can also save them to a centrally located Excel or MDB file. I have it running at startup for all my workstations.

Instead of checking each packet, I suggest pinging every system on the network to see what the ping state of every system is at.

<start>run>cmd.exe>ok>ping ip>

If the latency is more than 10 there is something wrong. Slow speeds are usally caused by bad wires or misconfigured routers. It could be a single machine but if its happening to all of them, than its not a single machine.

Try that and see what happens

Also, for the firewall setup, I suggest just putting a router and a server with a firewall or have the router act as a firewall too. Having each system install a firewall makes things complicated and can take alot of time to setup right. A built in firewall in the router is all you need. Disable any incoming ICMP pings and close incoming ports except port 80.

You should be set, this will be the best setup for your public operations, there is no need to open any other ports.

Did that work?

STATUS REPORT PLEASE :lol: