Re: ISA Problem or Firewall Client issue?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

I sent Steven the results of the tested as requested yesterday.

Sorry, this will be a long post, but I want to recap the whole situation and
describe our configuration. The server is a Dell Power Edge SBS 2003 server
with ISA 2004 and a dual NIC configuration (both Intel).
It is configured as follows:

INTERNET
|
ISP's Cisco Router w/public IP
|
SWITCH1 (required to provide public access to a machine outside the domain)
|
Customer's Router w/public IP at the WAN Port, Private IP to the SBS Server
(10.12.1.1)
|
SBS Server WAN NIC (10.12.1.2)
SBS Server LAN NIC (192.168.16.2)
|
SWITCH2 for the LAN
|
Cliented Workstations

The problem is this. At times when there is high Internet usage (students
were accessing the myspaces.com web site in the computer lab along with
streaming audio on a couple of the computers), users get the ISA page that
says the web site can't be accessed with error 10060 indicating a time out.
During the times when they have been having problems, I have been able to
log in remotely and work as normal without any noticeable decrease in
bandwidth between my site and them.

We have able to reproduce the problem by logging on a number of computers as
the users to myspaces.com and open a streaming audio site such as the Yahoo
music site on a couple of computers. It appears that anything that is
running before the problem starts is OK but any attempts to access new web
sites produce the ISA error page. Sometimes refreshing the page solves the
problem but not always. This always happens when any number of standard
network users are logged into the system. During off hours, logged on as
administrator I can open lots of streaming content and even the myspaces
site at one time and not be able to reproduce the error. Access to other
network resources don't appear to be a problem, but there are only a couple
of users who use the network for functions other than Internet and e-mail.
There is a mix of NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP computers on the
network.

I upgraded this site to SBS SP1 during their spring break in addition to
driver updates on the NICs in the server. They said the first day back to
school wasn't a problem but they started having problems on the second day
after return. I'm not sure about that, it might be that they just didn't
notice it, but I can only go by what they told me and it would be quite
noticeable if it was happening. There was no problem like this prior to
spring break that I know about and I'm assuming they didn't change their
Internet habits during the spring break.

I have tried the following to date:

Used a newer driver for the WAN NIC.

Used the recommendations from Steven to make adjustments in ISA.

Had the ISP check the router. They said everything looks normal. This is a
full T-1 connection and for the most part, the ISP says their bandwidth
usage is usually about half of the full bandwidth. They updated the IOS in
the router, just in case. They also have a filtering service for Internet
content. I asked them to shut that down temporarily, but it didn't help.

Replaced SWITCH1, the WAN NIC in the server, and tried a replacing the
customer's router. I didn't think it was hardware, but I didn't want to
leave anything to chance.

Blocked the myspace.com web site. This helped, but we were still having
issues given enough people logged on using the Internet.

Tried increasing the ISA cache to 200 MB (from 100).

After everyone left for the day and the workstations were logged out, I took
2 workstations logged on as administrator and 1 laptop connected directly to
SWITCH1 and started generating Internet traffic. I called the ISP and had
him watch the bandwidth usage. We generated enough traffic to push the
bandwidth to maximum (this included streaming audio, video, large file
download, and several instances of myspace.com web site traffic). In
addition, he started a constant ping to top it off. During this period, I
could NOT reproduce the ISA page error. The audio started breaking up on the
laptop a little when the bandwidth was maxed out. Units inside the network
were slow but never failed to load a page, and audio and video was smooth.

I'm at a loss at this point.

Lesa


"Steven Zhu [MSFT]" <v-stezhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:yavO4yPaGHA.880@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Lesa,

Thank you for keeping in touch. I will waiting for your information and
provide further help on this problem. It's always our pleasure to be of
assistance.

Have a great day.

Best Regards,

Steven Zhu
MCSE
Microsoft Online Partner Support
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Relevant Pages

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