Slow Performance and Network Errors

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Slow performance may be due to difficulties with your internal computer network (your LAN). MainBoss is often the first program where network problems are noticed, since it can use your network more intensively than other software.

Network problems are often subtle. For example, if you have a faulty wire, it doesn't usually stop transmissions completely. Instead, you get "noise" on the line that interferes with sending or receiving data. The network may have to make several attempts before transmitting a "packet" of data cleanly. Obviously, this slows down performance because the network has to send the same data several times; but because the data eventually gets through, MainBoss (and other software) still operate correctly. The only symptom you'll see is an increased length of time before MainBoss gets the data it needs.

Network difficulties typically arise from faulty hardware. There are three general possibilities:

• Faulty or inadequate cables between a single computer and the network server. For example, we've seen many cases where all the computers at a company have been upgraded for faster network communications, but the wires connecting those computers (hidden in walls or ceilings) are many years old and unable to handle fast data transmission.

  Cable problems may affect a single computer (if that computer's connection has a fault) or the entire network (if all the cables in your network are old and slow).

• The network card in a single computer is faulty. In this case, the computer in question will have significant performance problems. Other computers may also slow down slightly too, since the one "bad" computer keeps creating network errors that the central server has to handle. Making more work for the central server slows down everybody.
• The network card in the server computer is faulty. In this case, all computers on the network may experience poor performance.

If you encounter poor performance, you can check your network by running diagnostic problems. Windows XP has built-in network diagnostic tools that can help; see

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/netdiag.mspx

for information.

Companies that manufacture network cards also provide diagnostic programs to check for problems. For example, if your network server uses an Intel network card, Intel supplies a diagnostic program that lets you check to see whether you're experiencing a lot of network errors. If you didn't get appropriate diagnostic software when you bought the network card, you can download the software from Intel's web site. The same applies with other manufacturers.

You should run diagnostic programs both on the network server and on computers that talk to the server. In many cases, if a computer's network card is malfunctioning, the card can't detect its own problems—it doesn't notice that it's making mistakes. However, other computers that try to communicate with that card will be able to see that the card is "sick" because it generates a lot of errors.

A computer's event log may also reveal network errors. The event log only shows errors where the hardware gives up after making several attempts at data transmission. The log won't reveal how often transmissions failed on the first few attempts but eventually got through. Therefore, if network errors do show up on the event log, the odds are you have a significant problem.

Network problems may result in "information" or "warning" messages in the event log rather than actual "errors." Also, diagnostics arising from network problems often don't come out and say you have network problems. They give cryptic messages like the following:

• The browser service has failed to retrieve the backup list too many times on transport

• The browser has forced an election on network \Device\XXXXX because a master browser was stopped.

It may be difficult to figure out that such problems were actually caused by network errors.

If your network errors are severe enough, the problem may eventually reach the point where it causes MainBoss error messages. For example, suppose MainBoss tries to write information over your network to the central MainBoss database. MainBoss waits for a considerable period of time, but if the write operation doesn't work because of repeated network errors, MainBoss will eventually give up and report an I/O error. Typically however, network problems first show up as slow performance; only later do you see MainBoss errors.

It should be noted that no network is perfect. An error rate of under 1% is normal and acceptable. Significantly higher rates are signs of trouble.

Correcting network difficulties may require buying new hardware, especially if the problems lie in a malfunctioning network card. Buying the cheapest available card may not be wise—in our experience, some network cards are better than others and you have to pay for good quality.

If your network problems result because you're trying to run transmissions faster than your wiring allows, you may be able to increase overall performance by slowing down transmission speed. If running a little slower lets you avoid transmission errors, you may end up with better overall flowthrough because data gets through cleanly on the first try rather than requiring several attempts.

(Note that you might not have directly set the transmission speed of your network. Often, you just set network cards to run in "auto" mode. This means that when computers first connect with each other, they run tests to determine the fastest possible speed at which they can communicate. After that, they always try to run at that speed, even if problems arise that make such speed no longer feasible. In this case, you must explicitly set communication speed to something the network can actually support.)

MainBoss on a Non-Server Computer: With Windows XP and Windows 2000, you should make sure your MainBoss database is stored on the server computer as opposed to some other computer in the network. The reason is that Microsoft has deliberately designed Windows XP and Windows 2000 to slow down performance when more than two users attempt to access files on a non-server computer simultaneously. (This is Microsoft's way of encouraging you to buy more server licenses.) You can avoid this slowdown by putting your MainBoss database on your server.

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