Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of limsman
limsman

asked on

IPX vs IP performance

Experts,
Can anybody tell me if there would be a network performance benefit moving from ipx/spx to tcp/ip protocol under Netware 5? I'm sure I recall that someone said that less network traffic is created when using IP. The Netware server runs multiple database intensive applications that can struggle when the network becomes busy so we're looking at all ways to increase performance.

Thanks in advance.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of ShineOn
ShineOn
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial

5.1 shipped using SLPV1.You could move it to SLPV2, but it wasn't officially supported.
IPX on a LAN is superior in terms of speed and efficency, but not so on a WAN.
There is as much as a 20% difference in terms of throughput when measuring IPX vs. IP on a LAN.
IP has superior ECC, but it adds overhead to the total system throughput(great for a WAN ,but not as critical on a LAN.

What are you running in terms of infrastructure (switches, hubs, 10 or 100mb)?

There are a number of reasons a Novell network will slow down.

Collisions (if you are running hubs instead if switches)
Not enough RAM in the servers. (Cache buffers which should be at > 60%)
Slow disks (RAID not tweaked for DB performance).

 
Avatar of limsman
limsman

ASKER

Thanks for your responses. I'll get back when I've checked some things out.
Avatar of limsman

ASKER

ShineOn: Truth is I don't know what SP we're running on NW5 as I'm not the network administrator, but as you've said, it is unwise on NW5 due to some services using IPX. We are running several databases on the server. They are running on Extended Systems Advantage Database Server (ADS) and also Paradox. ADS, our largest DB is client/server based, but Paradox is not of course. I'm sure both databases run under IP. Your comments have been very helpful and I've passed them on to the network administrator who will better understand the details you have gone into.

pgm554: Thanks for your valued comments which have again been passed onto the network administrator. In answer to your questions, we are running a mix, mainly 100BASE-TX through switches over a fibre backbone, but one segment running 10BASE2 possibly over 10BASE5 backbone. Not sure if they are still hubs or switches in that area since upgrading is in progress on that segment. Just last week we upgraded the RAM in the server in an attempt to improve things. Disks are RAID but not sure how they are configured (i.e. towards DB performance).
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of limsman

ASKER

Once again, thanks for your comments pgm554. My manager has already agreed that the 10mb segment could cause a bottleneck which is the reason for the upgrade. The tweaking parameters are certainly worth checking out.

I'll close this question off now and split the points between the two experts that have helped, with the accepted answer going to ShineOn as the first to answer the original asked question.

Thanks again.