[ILUG] Networking question

[Michael Kennedy]

[Apologies to all - I sent this to Kevin earlier, instead of to the List].

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Kevin,

I'd check the LAN cabling also... every cable! Use one of those cheapie 
testers. "Abuse" the cable a little (at both ends at least, and maybe 
throughout its entire length) during the test... wriggle it, etc, as 
would apply during normal usage of the cables. Watch for even the 
slightest glitch in the LEDs.

You might replace the switches also - I've seen a few behave poorly 
intermittently, but I'm not aware of any simple test on these.

   - Mike

On 29/03/2011 10:21, kevin wrote:
 > I have a small network in an office. A Debian server supplying /home
 > directories to a small group of Ubuntu clients using NFS4. Typically
 > there will be about 1/2 dozen people using the network, authentication
 > is via NIS and the server also acts as a gateway to the wider world.
 > Networking is 100Mb ethernet distributed around the office by a couple
 > of switches.
 >
 > This all works fine and is generally quite responsive but occasionally
 > it seems to go into super-slow mode. For example: yesterday someone
 > tried to open a large (24mb) pdf on the network and it took several
 > minutes to open.
 >
 > I have checked routing tables, DNS and mounting NFS shares async.
 >
 > Any thoughts on why this might occasionally happen - seems a bit random.
 >
 > Kevin.