Clients Fail to Connect to Notes Server Running on Windows NT Server

• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5, 3.51, 4.0

SYMPTOMS

You have Lotus Notes server software running on your computer running Windows NT Server. Your Lotus Notes clients may experience difficulty connecting to this Lotus Notes server for periods of time up to five minutes. A network packet capture reveals that the client connection attempts are being refused by a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) reset from the server.

CAUSE

Lotus Notes Server programmatically binds a backlog queue of five to Winsock.

RESOLUTION

Lotus Development Corporation has produced a fix that increases the size of the backlog queue to the maximum under Windows NT Server. Please contact Lotus Notes technical support for more information regarding this fix.

Lotus Notes is manufactured by Lotus Development Corporation, a vendor independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this products' performance or reliability.

For information about how to contact Lotus Development Corporation, query in the Knowledge Base for one of the following articles:

ARTICLE-ID: Q65416
TITLE : Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, A-K

ARTICLE-ID: Q60781
TITLE : Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, L-P

ARTICLE-ID: Q60782
TITLE : Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, Q-Z

MORE INFORMATION

The issue appears when a large number of users try to connect to the Lotus Notes server at the same time. The Winsock backlog queue fills up because of the time it takes for the server to service the request and the hundreds of new requests that are continually being attempted. This problem has only been reported in large enterprise environments and has been reproduced on a Lotus Notes 4.x server but may affect earlier versions as well.

For additional information on TCP/IP, please see the following white paper available on the Microsoft anonymous ftp server:

File Name: Tcpipimp2.doc
Location : ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-docs/papers/
Title : "Microsoft Windows NT 3.5/3.51/4.0: TCP/IP Implementation
Details TCP/IP Protocol Stack and Services, Version 2.0"

Keywords : kb3rdparty kbnetwork ntnetserv ntprotocol nttcp NTSrv
Version : WinNT:3.5,3.51,4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbprb