Monitoring Network Performance

Resolving Network Bottlenecks

Typical causes for network bottlenecks are an overloaded server, an overloaded network, or a loss of network integrity. The following techniques can help to address some of these problems.

If communicating over Token Ring, FDDI or switched Ethernet networks, attempt to balance network traffic by distributing client connections across multiple network adapters. When using multiple network adapters, make sure that the network adapters are distributed among the PCI buses. For example, if you have four network adapters with three PCI buses, one 64-bit and two 32-bit, allocate two network adapters to the 64-bit bus and one adapter to each 32-bit bus. Splitting the adapters across multiple Ethernet segments is an effective way to eliminate an overloaded network if the physical environment is switched Ethernet, and all adapters are on the same physical segment. For more information about adding network adapters, see "Adding Network Adapters" later in this chapter.
Use adapters with the highest bandwidth available for best performance. Note that increasing bandwidth increases the number of transmissions that are taking place and in turn makes more work for your system, including more interrupts being generated. Remove unused network adapters to reduce overhead.
Use adapters that support task offloading capabilities (checksum offloading, IPSEC offloading, and large send offloading).
If your network uses multiple protocols, place each protocol on a different adapter. Make sure to use the most efficient protocols, especially ones that minimize broadcasts. Notice that reducing the number of protocols installed can increase performance.
High rates of interrupts from network adapters can reduce performance. Using network adapters that batch interrupts by means of interrupt moderation can improve this performance problem, provided the adapter driver supports this capability. Another option is to bind interrupts arising from network adapters to a particular processor to improve performance. When using Interrupt Filter to bind a network adapter to a set of processors. For more information about processor affinity and Interrupt Filter, see "Measuring Multiprocessor System Activity" in this book. For more information about Interrupt Filter, see online Help on the Windows 2000 Resource Kit companion CD.
Divide your network into multiple subnets or segments, attaching the server to each segment with a separate adapter. This reduces congestion at the server by spreading server requests.
Although binding order is relevant on the client computer, there is no reason to reorder server bindings because the server accepts incoming connections based on the protocol used by the client computer.
Use offline folders to work on network applications without being connected to a network. Offline folders make use of client-side caching, thereby reducing network traffic.

Adding Network Adapters

You need to disable some bindings to allow network adapters in the same computer on the same network segment to operate correctly when using NetBEUI. The reason for this is that, if you have two adapters on the same segment and install NetBEUI, the computer sees duplicate computer names due to the resulting NetBIOS name conflict, generates an error, and fails to start system services correctly. This also occurs on bridged or switched networks. In this case you also see the Event ID 2505 error in the event log, indicating a duplicate name on the network. The error might appear in the event log as either of the following messages:

Event ID : 2505 The server could not bind to the transport/device/netbt_ adapter_driver because another computer on the network has the same name. The server could not start.
Event ID : 2505 The server could not bind to the transport/device/nbf_adapter_driver because another computer on the network has the same name. The server could not start.

This problem does not affect routable protocols such as TCP/IP or AppleTalk because when you install or reconfigure them, you have to choose a network adapter, and this automatically disables the protocol's bindings to other adapters. In addition, the operating system treats NetBT as a namespace and need not be disabled. You can manually configure multiple network adapters in a computer by disabling NetBEUI bindings to network adapters other than the one you want to use for the NetBEUI protocol. To do this, disable the following bindings:

Server to NetBEUI protocol to adapter_driver to adapter
Workstation to NetBEUI protocol to adapter_driver to adapter
NetBEUI protocol to adapter_driver to adapter
NetBIOS interface to NetBEUI protocol to adapter_driver to adapter

When you have disabled all of these bindings, network operations can proceed.

In addition, if all clients have equal network access to any of the network adapters on the multihomed computer, and all of the client and server network adapters are on the same subnet, you can help to distribute the client connections between the server network adapters by adding the RandomAdapter registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet
\Services\Netbt\Parameters. In this way, each network adapter will still respond to the name query, but each network adapter will choose the IP address randomly from all the network adapters on the server. This helps to distribute network sessions among the network adapters, but does not necessarily balance the load because network traffic might vary greatly between the sessions.

Caution

Do not use a registry editor to edit the registry directly unless you have no alternative. The registry editors bypass the standard safeguards provided by administrative tools. These safeguards prevent you from entering conflicting settings or settings that are likely to degrade performance or damage your system. Editing the registry directly can have serious, unexpected consequences that can prevent the system from starting and require that you reinstall Windows 2000. To configure or customize Windows 2000, use the programs in Control Panel or Microsoft Management Console (MMC) whenever possible.