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Thread: network health check

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    network health check

    Apparently our management think there are unacceptable delays and interruptions on my network, and want a health check to be conducted. What sort of findings should I expect from these guys?

    We have 8 servers, 4 of which have ended up sharing applications/ file shares and printing, four gigabit Allied Telesyn switches, four 10/100 switches with a fibre link from the Comms Room to halfway down the building. There are also 2 Motorola wireless switches for a WLAN in the warehouse. We save about 800GB to tape each night and there should be more data but my hands have been tied before now in terms of spending to resolve this.

    Any thoughts?

    Cheers
    Rob
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    Jay
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    Re: network health check

    bad... always bad. They will be looking to find holes to either justify their payment or to try and take the contract.

    what do they mean by unacceptable delays and interruptions
    □ΞVΞ□

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    Re: network health check

    I don't know, the only thing I can point to is the last time I was out of the office some users were not getting a proper IP address from DHCP and all it needed was for a couple of switches to be rebooted, but in my absence, they rebooted all the servers as well - eeeekk! That has happened once before but I was here to resolve the issue. Also, at various times people complain that the shares are slow to open.
    When I asked for more details they said we can't tell the health check guys what to look for !!

    Rob
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    Senior Member oolon's Avatar
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    Re: network health check

    Quick questions to get a better feeling for things, I presume your gigabit ones are managed (are they layer 2 or layer 3) and your 10/100 as ones are unmanged. If your gigabit are managed are your doing any layer 3 on them? You indicated that your network is split in two, with effectively one gigbit of bandwidth between the two sections. So, what do you have at either end? I Presume the 10/100 switches are for users, how many users sitting at each end of your gigabit link. Do you run spanning tree, BGP, vlans, or VOIP?

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    Overclocking Since 1988 nightkhaos's Avatar
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    Re: network health check

    Grab a copy of Visio (or similar) and give us a visual representation with as much annotation as possible/you can tell us with breaching confidentality.
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    Re: network health check

    http://www.joseph-hall.net/images/network.vsd

    There are four Allied Telesyn GS950 switches with 6 of the servers connected and with uplinks to each other plus all main office LAN sockets plugged into them with one of the AT 10/100 switches to make more LAN sockets available.
    One of the gigabit switches has a fibre link to a second patch panel cabinet in the warehouse. At the end of that is another 10/100 switch with a few more LAN sockets for the warehouse Ops.
    There are two more small patch panel cabs in the warehouse with 10/100 switches in connected with cat 5e cable.
    I don't use the web interface on the switches to control anything on them.
    The pc's mostly get an IP address via DHCP, and the servers have a reservation. There is one subnet used.
    The WLAN uses two Motorola wireless switches and 11 Access Points with PoE modules.
    The remaining two servers are connected via a Netgear gigabit switch to a handful of pc's used for Rhino 3D nmodelling.

    Cheers
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    Re: network health check

    Have you run any speed testing yourself yet? I'd get a reasonable sized file (XP SP3 network install would be good for this) and then run some copies and time them. Repeat across all the switches. Should give you a good idea what throughput you're actually getting.
    If SNMP monitoring is an option for you then get a copy of PRTG and monitor the switches and servers. Again should give you some good baseline information.

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    Re: network health check

    Ok that diagram is still quite confusing to me, are your 6 gigabit switches all trunked together on a backbone? Or do they all have seperate uplinks between each other? Your network is all one big thing so all you broadcast traffic is going down your fiber link and out over your wireless. It would be best to seperate it into different vlans, that will affect latency.

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    Re: network health check

    Quote Originally Posted by oolon View Post
    Ok that diagram is still quite confusing to me, are your 6 gigabit switches all trunked together on a backbone? Or do they all have seperate uplinks between each other? Your network is all one big thing so all you broadcast traffic is going down your fiber link and out over your wireless. It would be best to seperate it into different vlans, that will affect latency.
    May I ask you save that diagram as a PNG so those of us who a Visio deprived can view it?
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    Re: network health check

    Quote Originally Posted by nightkhaos View Post
    May I ask you save that diagram as a PNG so those of us who a Visio deprived can view it?
    That'd be really useful as I don't have access to Visio at the moment either.

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    Re: network health check

    try open the vsd in internet explorer
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    Re: network health check

    Am running nix myself until I get back to work in a week and a half so not an option....dia won't open vsd files and have also tried sk1.

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    Re: network health check

    Quote Originally Posted by alsenior View Post
    try open the vsd in internet explorer
    IE6 does not support Visio. Does IE7 or IE8?
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    Re: network health check



    there you go chaps
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    Re: network health check

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post


    there you go chaps
    Thank you.
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  16. #16
    Overclocking Since 1988 nightkhaos's Avatar
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    Re: network health check

    Looking at that I seem to be little confused. And I still have no idea what the problem of "unexceptable delays" stems from. As far as I can tell that should be a fairly healthy network.
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