network congestion issue.

I have a network congestion problem. This was not my design. I am trying to determine the network efficiency for two competing applications.

-We have a client with a 40 node LAN.
-All nodes have static IP/mask. (192.168.5.0/24)
-The gateway for all nodes is a stub Router/FW connecting the site to the ISP provider.
-The node configured DNS settings point to the ISP DNS.
-NO internal WINS server
-NO internal DNS server
-NO internal DHCP server
-NO local host files being used.
-Essentially one large peer-to-peer LAN.

Is there any way to determine the efficiency (QoS) of the LAN ? ie..how much unneccessary congestion is taking place.
If so, what tool could I use ?

I may be able to "enable" wins,dns,dhcp on a linux box.
Would this dramatically improve the network efficiency for a LAN this size ?

Thanks

 

40 node LAN.
-All nodes have static IP/mask. (192.168.5.0/24)

Can't be. That only provides 23 good addresses for 40 nodes (since you absolutely should not be trying to run a device with 192.168.5.0 ).

Build a hosts file and put a copy on each PC. That will speed your internal connections quite a bit. On a network that size, it will be lots more efficient than WINS or LMHosts or pretty much any other name resolution method.

The only real knock on hosts is the manual tweaking required if/when you make changes. My preference is to bite the bullet one time and create a batch file that will push a copy of a hosts file to each PC on the network. Then if you have to make a change, run the batch file and push out your updated version.

Congestion - how do you know?

And is the client running hubs? If so, quickest fix I know of would be a change over to switches. Should give you from 10 to 50 times faster network performance depending on what networking hardware the PCs are running.

Run current versions of ad-aware and spybot on each PC. If they are loaded with spyware and most of it is trying to 'call home' you will have lots of absolutely unneeded traffic on the network.

If NetBeui is running, get rid of it. Too much broadcast traffic and even a 40 PC network can get a little sludgy.

Specific ways to check on traffic flow will depend entirely on what network equipment is in use. Small SOHO hubs/switches normally don't have any diagnostics built in while high end devices do.

Otherwise you are looking at a packet sniffer and lots of time using it. Hardware sniffers are expensive but you can usually rent one for a couple of days for a reasonable amount.

 

newt...good stuff thanks...except

/24 equates to the subnet mask 255.255.255.0
This network 192.168.5.0/24 would give 254 useagble addresses, with 192.168.5.255 as the broadcast.

Thanks again.

 

Interesting. I've never seen that notation used so got a little confused.

I was afraid you were talking about using 192.168.5.0 thru 192.168.5.24 to run 40 PCs and