In a large organization where a large scale networking exists, an efficient running network is a must. A poor design of networking environment can cause the users experiencing a slow network. The performance of slow network connection is commonly caused by the network congestion, where the data traffic exceeding the maximum capacity of the existing network bandwidth.
What kinds of factors contributing to slow network and how to upgrade the performance of the slow network connection? There are many factors you can investigate such as collisions, bottlenecks network, viruses, or WAN / LAN design.
Collisions
Legacy devices contribute significant to slow network connection. Legacy Ethernet network such as 10 Base2, 10Base5, and 10Base-T which uses CSMA/CD algorithm, become more inefficient under higher loads. The performance of these legacy networks begin to degrade when the load begin to exceed 30 percent utilization that leads to what we experience as a slow network.
The term collision domain defines the set of devices for which their frames could collide. All of the above legacy networks using a hub risk collisions between the frames that they send, so all devices on one of these types of Ethernet networks are in the same collision domain.
LAN switches overcome the problems created by collisions and the CSMA/CD algorithm by removing the possibility of a collision. Switches do not create a single shared bus, like a hub; they treat each individual physical port as a separate bus. Switches use memory buffers to hold incoming frames as well, so when two attached devices send a frame at the same time, the switch can forward one frame while holding the other frame in a memory buffer, waiting to forward one frame until after the first one has been forwarded. Replacing your legacy networks with Switches will greatly improve the performance and experiencing a slow network connection will be reduced significantly.
Bottlenecks
Heavy load of users accessing the network resources will cause the network exoeriences a bottleneck that will lead to a slow network. Bandwidth intensive application such as video application can also contribute a significant slow network connection since this application frequently causes the bottleneck.
You need to identify the application that is accessed by only a department especially heavy load applications, and place the server application in the same switches as the users who access it and creating VLANs would be a good solution. Placing often accessed resources such as servers in close proximity to clients will improve network response times, thus increase the performance of slow network.
LAN performance can be improved by using high speed 100/1000 Mbps backbone links and high performance LAN switches. This coupled together with high performance routing (layer-3 switching) can produce a network that functions at or near wire speeds with minimal latency and significantly reduce the slow network connection.
Trojan Virus attack
If your system environment is infected by Trojan virus that causing the system is flooded with malicious program, the network experiences a network congestion that leads to slow network. There are some types of virus that broadcast huge traffic that causes the network congestion and sometimes stop the network services.
You need to have a strong network protection from virus attack. Centralized antivirus software that distributes the signature updates automatically to the clients will at least give the earliest update to the clients, as well as a regulation or policy about the virus.
WSUS (Windows system update services) infrastructure deployment is a must for your organization that will automatically update the windows critical patches; security patches; and windows critical update to the clients at the earliest. The viruses usually attack the vulnerabilities of the systems and the windows updates will patched the vulnerabilities that will prevent the possible attack from these known vulnerabilities.
Getting prepared for the virus attack that may cause the slow network will be much better for your organization. And educate the users with the policy guideline in using the email as well as the internet policy will help you prevent the possible virus attack.
Slow network during authentication
When you have multiple sites linked together and each branch offices and the main office are configured as separate active directory site and each domain controller is configured as DNS name server, during peak hours the users at branch offices frequently report that they cannot logon frequently. This is due to bottleneck problem in internetwork across the WAN link that causing slow network.
When a user logs on to the network, the global catalog provides universal group membership information for the account to the domain controller processing the user logon information. If a global catalog is not available when a user initiates a network logon process, the user is able to log on only to the local computer unless the site has been specifically configured to cache universal group membership lookups when processing user logon attempts. In this scenario the domain controller must contact the global catalog server across a WAN link that is saturated. You need to enable universal group membership caching in each branch offices that will overcome this slow network problem. Promoting the domain controllers in each site will fix the issue too, but the global catalog replication will contribute high traffic to the WAN connection link too, this will lead to slow network connection.
See also:
- Business firewalls,
- and business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
- Cisco RV220 Small business firewall router
- Edimax multi wan router – Enduralink ER-1088
- Sonicwall NSA2400 network security appliances
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