Hi All, I have received invaluable information from this site many times I thought I would go straight to the source for assistance. I have a small cabled network (sharing one fast dsl line –At&t) with a Vista Business Machine used as a stand alone server. I have a windows 2000, XP, and Vista Workstations that access the server for data and one application used for work (appraisal). Most everything works fine except for the one program that is very unstable most of the time. I have contacted support and they tell me it’s a network problem based on the following analysis: A test of the “Data Transfer Rate” indicates a receiving rate of 7.8 mb per second versus a sending rate of 2.34 or lower mb/second. They say the sending rate needs to be close to the receiving rate for the application to work properly. My question is what settings need adjustment and/or tests can I perform to figure out the problem? Its obvious I am not a network guy but hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks, Scott

Depending on your budget you have a couple of options. From your setup let's try the cheaper way first.... You need to breakdown the problem in the network, so the best thing to do is cut out the network first and then add on device at a time. Connect a PC to the server with a cross-over cable and run the speed test again... I take you are using standard ping for this. If you get the result you need, add another part of the network in and keep going until you get the bad latency again. If you are using a flat network (PC/Switch/Server) setup you might try and play with the metric on the gateway for the PC's (In TCP/IP settings). Change it from 0 to 1 to 2 etc.. and see if it helps. If you are Wi-Fi ing the network this a other problem... But the cable exercise will help you find the slow bit! Which would be the Wi-Fi.....

First and foremost, how about an overview of your network? Something like: DSL >> SOHO Router >> Switch >> Server/Clients What are your interfaces rated for, 10/100/1000 Mbps and what is the bandwidth rate of any/all network equipment (router/switch)? Once we have that info, it'll help a lot in figuring out what's going on. I have contacted support and they tell me it’s a network problem based on the following analysis: A test of the “Data Transfer Rate” indicates a receiving rate of 7.8 mb per second versus a sending rate of 2.34 or lower mb/second. They say the sending rate needs to be close to the receiving rate for the application to work properly. My question is what settings need adjustment and/or tests can I perform to figure out the problem? I'd love to know how they performed these tests and came up with these numbers. Any info you can provide on that would help. As per my request for info above, also include the spec's on the computer running this software of which you speak. I will say this much, even if you're running at 10 Mbps (not likely) that one number is very low (2.34) A 10 Mbps network should give you a solid transfer rate of around 8 Mbps. If there's that big a discrepancy between the sending and receiving units I would suspect the problem would be either the sending computer's hardware or the software itself. I've run into situations like this before and it's easy to blame the network when you have little or no formal training in computer, lack experience and have to rely on some crappy Q&A database which is the case for most helpdesk people. They're not normally trained technicians. Oh, it wouldn't hurt anything for you to list the name of the software too. Others may have experience with that software and it's entirely possible they experience this same problem and have a fix for it. So, to sum up: - Detail your network topology - Hardware specs on "server" running software - Software (what is it)