the network i'm managing is having incredible performance problems. i've replaced a ton of the underlying network hardware, but we're still having problems... my next step is to correct the network addressing scheme.
currently its a flat network - no vlans, subnets, etc. - with a class b netmask! we probably have, at most, 700 devices on the network at the same time... obviously no need for a 65,000+ address space.
currently we're using 10.10.0.0/16. i'd like to keep the net id at 10.10.0.0 but change the netmask to 255.255.248.0 or 255.255.252.0 scheme, but i'm worried i'm going to cause major headaches for myself. anyone done something like this before?
i understand i need to fix all my routes, static ip's, dhcp scope to reflect the change, but is there something i may be missing? am i going to screw up my dns tables? switching arp tables?
any input is appreciated.
The shortening of the subnet mask itself should not improve your network (unles some strange problem will not be solved by it just as a side effect). I would recommend to try to find the bottleneck in the network. If you have no dumb switches or so you are happy. You should create SNMP graphs from any interesting device/interface (bits per second, packets (unicast, broadcast and maybe multicasts too) per second, various errors per second). If you have the graph you usually are able to see an overloaded interface or the one which is generating errors.
Your network maybe full of broadcasts (it would be fine if you could meassure average broadcast rate) some device (switch) may be overloaded, there maybe a station injecting corrupted packets. There maybe even viruses active in your network.
Once you will know what is causing the problems you can solve it...