RE: Strange Irregular DNS/Networking Problems

Hello robinwilson16,

Nice to hear that you solved it. Thank's for the feedback with your solution, maybe it also helps some others.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
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I seem to have managed to fix the problem.
I had already tried all the following things but not all at once.
Disable recieve-side scaling
Disable chimney offload state
Disable receive window auto tuning
Disable offloading in the network adapter properties
Disable IPv6 in the network adapter
After doing this on the server and the client it seems to have fixed
everything and the network now seems to work almost as well as with
the XP clients.

Network shares show up quickly, windows is responsive when logged in
via a roaming profile, I can open up all the programs which would
trigger the issue before.

It seems that the reason why the windows 7 machines performed even
worse than vista was because chimney offloading was on by default
whereas in Vista it is turned on. Turning it on in Vista made Vista as
bad as Windows 7.

After disabling all these things file transfers across the network are
a lot faster as well. They now go at 2Mbytes per second versus less
than 500kbyes before.

"robinwilson16" wrote:

I think I spoke too soon as the problem is still evident although it
is
certainly not as bad.
For example I can open and close Firefox a few times but then it will
stall
the network after opening it a few times.
This problem has puzzled me for a long time now and I have tried
everything
I can think of. I started experiencing it as soon as I upgraded the
machines
to Vista but I cannot relate the problem to anything, cannot see any
errors
and all machines are fully patched and up to date.
My network is not a complicated set up and only has one domain
controller.
I have done the following:
- Changed domain controllers through promoting a new one and demoting
an ond
one which was a different model
- Replaced network cards
- Turned off flow control on the network adapter
- Disabled IPV6 (this helped)
- Replaced the router with a netgear business router
- Replaced the two switches with layer 2 managed business netgear
ones (they
were the white home netgear ones prior to this)
- Replaced all the cables with new cat 5 cables
- Tested with just one client and the domain controller on the
network
I have probably done more troubleshooting as this problem has plagued
me for
over a year now.
I added the Windows 7 PC to see if that would suffer from the same
issues
and that is actually worse than the Vista PCs (although it can't
really be
taken into account obviously)
I just tested it with two logins I had created so it didn't mess up
other
roaming profiles.
I would phone Microsoft support if I had any idea what could be
causing it
or some error codes to give them but at this stage I still have
nothing so
don't think they would really be able to help.
I tried to use Wireshark to analyse the network but don't really
understand
it very well.
I tried doing a net stop server after the network stalled as from an
article I found it appeared as if this service could be causing the
problem and it hung when trying to stop the service so I couldn't
start or stop it and had to restart the domain controller.

Thanks for your help with this.
Robin
"Meinolf Weber" wrote:

Hello robinwilson16,

Never heard about this kind of problem with IPv6, but think this is
because it is not used so much until now. Personally i disable IPv6
i not use it on the NIC's.

Also adding the windows 7 Beta version to a running production
environment is a really bad decision. You should NEVER do it.

I know there where some additional patches for Vista about netwrok
speed and some others but i don't know if they are included in SP1,
hopefully yes.

What i heard is that firefox or some other not MS browsers and
addons make problems with DNS resolving after changing DNS servers.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers
no rights.
** Please do NOT email, only reply to Newsgroups
** HELP us help YOU!!! http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
After reading lots of articles on networking issues with Vista I
tried disabling IPV6 and everything seems to work properly now.

The network is a lot more responsive and doesn't stop working when
I
try to
launch certain applications.
The speed of file copies from vista machines is still shockingly
slow
(SP1
machines) although not XP machines but apart from that removing
IPV6
from the
2008 domain controllers and workstations seems to have fixed the
issue.
As another point when I tried to join a Windows 7 PDC beta machine
to
the domain the network would stop working everytime I tried to log
in
with a roaming profile but with IPV6 disabled it works as normal.
I'm not sure if the problem is related more with my networking
hardware or Vista's implementation of IPV6 but am just extremely
pleased I have resolved this after many months of frustrating
network problems where nothing "seemed" to be wrong.

What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks
Robin
"robinwilson16" wrote:
Unfortunately the problem is still occuring.
I tried launching Firefox on a client and it stopped the whole
network on
all the machines. Firefox doesn't even load although it shows as
running in
processes.
After resetting the domain controller and booting up things are
back
to
normal.
I am trying to copy 8GB of files across the network at the moment
and
it is copying at around 260KB which I would feel was too slow if I
was downloading the files from the internet. I get 16Mbits from
the
internet.
How do I find out what is causing all these problems?
I tried swapping the switch and unplugging everything apart from
the
PC and
the domain controller and tried copying the files again but it
made
no
difference.
One switch is 1 gbit and the other is 100 mbits.
I also tried restarting the domain controller and the pc again.
The speed starts at around 5Mbits and then drops gradually to
260kbits. The normal switch is a managed switch and it shows no
errors.
Could the problem be dns related?
When the problem is bad the DFS share actually becomes
unobtainable.
Thanks
Robin
"robinwilson16" wrote:
Thanks for the help.
I have made the changes and will let you know if it resolves the
problem.
The easiest way is to try running Firefox! I will wait for the
DNS
changes to
propogate first.
I was already using the server for DHCP.
Will let you know how it goes.
Thanks
Robin
"Meinolf Weber" wrote:
Hello robinwilson16,

Yes, let the router only do it's routing job nothing else.
FORWARDERS set on the DNS server. If you use also the router for
DHCP remove it and stop DHCP on the router. This is also better
to run on the server.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers
no rights.
** Please do NOT email, only reply to Newsgroups
** HELP us help YOU!!!
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
At the moment the requests get forwarded to the router which
then deals with forwarding the requests on to the ISPs name
servers.

Would it be best to remove the router from there and put in the
ISPs name servers instead?

Thanks
Robin
"Meinolf Weber" wrote:
Hello robinwilson16,

The router should not be set there, or do you use it for any
DNS services?

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no
warranties,
and
confers
no rights.
** Please do NOT email, only reply to Newsgroups
** HELP us help YOU!!!
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
Sorry the router is in as a forwarder and my previous comment
saying the router was not specified is incorrect.

Robin

"robinwilson16" wrote:

Hello Meinolf

I have double checked the DNS settings and only internal dns
servers
are
being used.
I allow only secure updates
The start of authority is the domain controller
The name server is the domain controller
WINS is not being used
Zone transfers are only allowed to name servers
I do have a TAPI3Directory which I don't normally see on
other
domains. What is that used for?
I use TCP/IP V4 for the network and nothing in DNS points to
any
external IPs or addresses or even the router. Is this
correct?
Thanks for the help
Robin
"Meinolf Weber" wrote:
Hello robinwilson16,

Make sure that you use only domain internal DNS servers in
the domain and no externals, except as a Forwarder on the
DNS server properties in DNS management console. Do you use
networking over TCP/IP or is it disabled? WINS server?

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no
warranties,
and
confers
no rights.
** Please do NOT email, only reply to Newsgroups
** HELP us help YOU!!!
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
I forgot to mention that rebooting the domain controller
will fix the problem (until the next time it occurs)



.

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