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Network Performance

my_id_0308

Hi guys,

Just wondering anyone know how to monitor a production network perfomance.
I have been trying my best speed everything up for the remote site's end user but they seems to be complaining that it's slow.

anyone knows of a tool that i can used so i can make a benchmark performance of network performance?

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Comments

MickQ

Block facebook and youtube.

nimrod.sixty9

ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer 7
IDK if you can beanchmark with this but you can see whose on Facebook when you see 90% of the bandwidth going to a single host.

lordy

You could install something like Cacti to monitor and graph the utilitazation of your links and bandwidth. That should give you an idea where the bottleneck(s) is/are.

SteveO86

Free Netflow analyzer:
Free Real-Time NetFlow Analyzer from SolarWinds
http://itnetworkingpros.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/whos-congesting-my-network/

Or run a packet capture and see what kind of traffic is flowing on the network.

Also look at the existing hardware utilization. (Link, CPU, Memory)
http://www.solarwinds.com/products/freetools/network_device_monitor/

Also check out what is slow, the PC, a certain application, etc

crrussell3

Spiceworks also has a bandwidth monitoring tool as part of the install. Haven't used it so can't vouch for how good it is.

Forsaken_GA

Monitoring bandwidth only gives you part of the equation. I'm not sure if Spiceworks implements Netflow, it probably just pulls interface data via SNMP like other solutions.

So if all you're interested in are the trends of your network, ie, when does it actually get saturated, and you're not concerned with anything else, then bandwidth monitors are enough.

If you want to be able to determine what traffic exactly was going across your network at 3pm that slowed the entire network down and made people send you angry email or phone calls, you want Netflow. Netflow allows you to determine who, what, when, and where, which allows you to go have a nice personal conversation about the why.

it_consultant

The bottleneck is almost certainly the remote connection. They probably have a site to site (or mobile) vpn which is never very fast. If there is a couple of people at the remote site, it only takes a couple of people copying files on network shares via SMB before they are completely saturated. Unfortunately, almost all the solutions out there are extremely costly.

GT-Rob

A mix of bandwidth monitoring (something that records and graphs netflow, there are a million out there), and something that records and graphs response times (again, doesn't matter what program), would be a good way to see when/why/who is slowing things down.

How to fix it is another task (block things, QoS, WAAS, more pipe, etc)

it_consultant

GT-Rob wrote: »

A mix of bandwidth monitoring (something that records and graphs netflow, there are a million out there), and something that records and graphs response times (again, doesn't matter what program), would be a good way to see when/why/who is slowing things down.

How to fix it is another task (block things, QoS, WAAS, more pipe, etc)

If it is over a VPN it shouldn't to be too hard to get a list of top talkers, both hostname and ports. That will sort out who is hogging the bandwidth and the protocol should give you a good idea of what they are doing. It is almost always SMB if they are on a WINTEL network. Windows uses SMB for a lot of things and it is a really chatty protocol.

Sometimes it can be 4 digit dialing phone calls, if the calls are being piped over the vpn or similar point to point connection. Depending on the phone system they may not being doing any kind of compression. I don't know if the remote site has their own phone switch though.

The OP should let us know what kind of data connection the remote site has, how it ties into the main network, how many people are at the remote site, whether they have a phone switch at the remote site, and whether that phone switch is analog (this is unlikely), digital, or SIP.

rsutton

It would help if you posted your setup, but from the sounds of it you may want to implement a device at the remote site that caches information. If it is file share data and this is a Windows network you can use DFS to cache data between sites. More information is needed to provide other solutions.

Also, if you want a quick and easy way to check utilization you can fire up wireshark on the port your traffic passes through and see what type of traffic is clogging up the pipe.