Dear experts,
We're puzzled by our office network's behavior. After changing a few defective switches, our Internet connection would be blazingly fast in the morning, but around midday, it would slow down and it would continue into the afternoon. But the next day, it would be fast again in the morning.
Our office has about 100 users and we're on a 3Mbps DSL connection. From the 100 users, only about 10 actually use the Internet; the rest just work with office apps. The 90 other users don't have an IM client, don't listen to streaming audio/internet radio or email. Just intranet connections.
The download speed when it's fast is about 320KB/sec, but around 11:00 am or so, it slows down to about 7-10KB/sec. We have no idea what's causing it so we're really stumped. In addition, we do a regular update our antivirus software and each computer has a firewall.
Any ideas? Thanks!
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If you have a network Hub that you can place between your dsl router and your network, you can use product like ethereal to analyze the network traffic from all devices at the packet level. You can see which machine is sending the most traffic. Ethereal is fairly easy to install and use. You can get ethereal at download.com
By any chance do you have someone who comes into work or logs onto a computer around that time of day? If so, that machine is likely your culprit. I had a similar scenerio and it drove me crazy tracking it down. Turned out that the machine got 'mysteriously' infected, even though it had up-to-date AV software installed.
I would try to eliminate the DSL connection as the problem. If possible, disconnect your network from the DSL connection as soon as you begin to see the degraded performance (on the LAN side of the DSL router) and connect a PC or laptop to the LAN side of the router. Check the connection by downloading a file. If the speed of the download improves significantly then you know that the problem is internal. If there's no improvement you should contact your DSL provider. If the problem is internal you will need to troubleshoot the network by process of elimination. Go to each of the internet connected computers and unplug them one at a time, checking your Intenet performance after unplugging each.
mdennis442's suggestion of using ethereal is the way to go if you have a hub to place between your network and the DSL router. It can help you pinpoint the machine that's generating the Internet-bound traffic very quickly.
HTH...
yer i agree use wireshart (use to be eathereal) to capture some traffic and ahve a look. I bet it jsut people starting to browse the web at lunch time!!
also remer DSL lines are sharted with other people on the same exchange.. (contentation ratio) so if other people in your street start using there connection more over luchtiom this may affect you as well..
DevilWAH's right. It's Wireshark now, not ethereal. Here's a link to the website:
http://www.wireshark.org/
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by: brittonvPosted on 2008-02-14 at 18:28:18ID: 20898965
Sounds like someone is starting a bittorrent client every morning.
They will consume more bandwidth the longer they are on.