internal ping responses get high

Please tell more about your network, like the firewall and switches in use, and the number of workstations. Have you tried tracert to figure out what exactly network traffic must travel through, then ping any devices in between? Maybe some device is generating a large amount of network traffic.

well I have my network topped off by 1 sonicwall NSA 240 firewall, I have everything running through Netgear GS748T switches, and I have about 60 workstations in the environment. I will try a tracert and see. Our network is pretty simple. All the workstations are connected to 3 of these switches, and each of these 3 switches are directly connected to 1 other switch which connects to all the servers (so 1 cable per workstation switch connected directly to the server switch). Are there any methods I can use to track down devices generating high network traffic aside from pulling cables from the switches and see which one lowers speeds back down to normal?

I forget off hand if those are managed switches. If they are, I would try to see whether any of them have a ton of traffic hitting a given port.

Also you could install a program like prtg or wireshark to capture traffic. On your Sonicwall, do you have the analyzer by chance?

I have a very similar environment. Do you have any vlans setup in the switches and sonicwall?

Hi folks! Thanks for all the information. My switches are managed, and I check the port and don't see anything out of the ordinary. Right now, I am seeing normal speeds, but on my default LAN IP address on my firewall, I am occasionally seeing a jump in a response every couple of minutes. Otherwise everything is <1ms. As far as my firewall goes, I am not sure if I have the analyzer. Is that the packet capture utility? I do have that. Can I use wireshark to monitor the traffic hitting that IP address and see what sources are hitting it? I don't use any VLANS in the firewall or switches.

Hi Folks, I am not seeing the elevated pings anymore, but every day or two, the IP address of the default LAN port on my firewall goes down for 5-6 minutes now. I see pings timing out on it during this time. There is no evidence in the firewall logs of the interface going down at all. There are no log entries of any kind for that interface actually during that time. I have tried other ports on the switch as well as other cables between them. No other network IPs are going down during this time. Can anyone help at all with how I can determine why this is happening?

I give it a B because I treated the symptoms and things look good after a week or two of no incidents