Question

Describe three ways to improve network performance on the server. Do you have any personal experience with server/LAN network performance issues? If so, how did it impact your home/business? What tools were used to fix the problem?

Answer 1

Answer:-

Describe three ways to improve network performance on the server

1. Understand your network
Without having an understanding of what's actually happening on your network, you are likely to fail at any attempt to address performance issues. Peter Prichard, marketing director Asia-Pacific at Compuware, says people tend to blame the network for poor performance, but the PCs and servers can also be the cause.

"The first thing to do is make sure the network really is the problem," Prichard says. "Even if it's not the network, IT spends a lot of time proving it's not." Tools such as Compuware's Vantage suite can isolate problems such as a slow client, excessive latency on a WAN link, or poorly written SQL on a back end server. An application might be developed on a LAN and then deployed over a WAN with disappointing results due to an excessive number of database calls. This sort of analysis may reveal things you didn't know about your network, such as a 1.5Mbps WAN link when you're paying for 2Mbps, says Peter Owen, territory manager at Packeteer.

Collecting the right information also lets you take an active stance, identifying and dealing with problems before they impact on users.

2. Quality of service and packet shaping
One way of improving perceived performance is to ensure that the most important applications get priority. Typically, applications are allocated to classes of service (typically platinum, gold, silver, and bronze), and then policies are set for each class. For example, platinum traffic might be guaranteed at least 50 percent of the available bandwidth.

Three or four categories are typical, says Danny Price, solutions manager at Vanco Australasia, but some organisations use as many as six. A larger number is too hard to manage, he says.

Some category decisions are easy, such as blocking or severely limiting peer-to-peer file sharing, says Owen. Packeteer's software supports auto-discovery and auto-configuration, after which priorities can be fine-tuned to suit the needs of the organisation.

Many people will blindly add bandwidth in an attempt to solve a perceived problem -- this tends to be one of the biggest mistakes people make, Prichard says. "You've got to have facts -- application-based facts," he says.

David Gibb, technical consultant with Vanco Australasia agrees. He says that what may dramatically improve performance in one environment could hinder performance in another.

3. Compression
"You're always going to have a bandwidth limitation," says Wastie. Changes such as the perceived need for disaster recovery, ever-growing PowerPoint decks and the tension between increasingly distributed staff and increasingly centralised infrastructure soak up previously spare bandwidth, while locations in rural areas and hard-to-service facilities such as oil rigs will always have limited bandwidth.

Where this is the problem, compression could be the answer. Modern compression algorithms, including those used by Peribit and Packeteer, are able to recognise patterns in very large data streams perhaps weeks apart. This gives better results than traditional algorithms that use a limited window, perhaps as small as 1Mbit of data.

Do you have any personal experience with server/LAN network performance issues?

yes ,

how its impacting:

1.	Configuration not saved Reboot will cause config to be lost
2.	Saved configurations don’t meet corporate policy Source of many problems from performance to reliability to security
3.	Bloated firewall rule set; unused ACL entries Poor firewall performance Open, unused rules, creating potential security problems
4.	Firewall connection count exceeded New connections via the firewall fail Business applications exhibit intermittent failure at high firewall loads VPNs begin to fail
5.	Link hog - someone downloading music or videos Slower application response, impacting user productivity
6.	Interface traffic congestion Unpredictable application performance, impacting user productivity
7.	Link problems & stability Physical or DataLink errors cause slow or intermittent application performance Link or interface stability can impact routing and spanning tree (see other examples)
8.	Environmental limits exceeded Fan failure, power supply problems, and high temperatures are indicators of problems that will likely cause a network device to reboot, affecting any applications relying on the device
9.	Memory utilization increasing A bug in the device’s operating system is consuming more memory and when no free memory exists, the device will reboot, disrupting applications that are transiting the device

how to fix network problems:-

Check that Wi-Fi is turned on and you are connected.

1. Open your Settings app "Wireless and Networks" or "Connections" tap Wi-Fi. Depending on your device, these options may be different.
2. Turn Wi-Fi on.
3. Find the Wi-Fi connection indicator at the top of your screen .
4. If this is not displayed, or none of the bars are filled in, you may be out of range of a Wi-Fi network.
5. Move closer to the router, check to see if you have a stronger Wi-Fi connection, and try again.

Restart your wireless router.

If you are connecting to Wi-Fi at home, check your router's manual for instructions on how to reset it. Often you can:

1. Unplug the router from the electrical outlet and make sure the lights on the router go out.
2. Wait 30 seconds.
3. Plug the router back in and wait 30 seconds for all the lights to come back on.

Advanced tip: Check to see if firewalls are blocking access to ports required by Google Play (TCP and UDP 5228).

If you still have connectivity issues after you complete these steps, contact your internet service provider or the host of the Wi-Fi network.