Topic: Network bandwidth question

[sicnus]

For months now I've been running a Win2000 Server as domain controller and having upwards of 5 or 6 hosts (nothing huge) on the same cable connection.

Recently enabled DHCP and a user (first to do this) joined using DHCP, and after that all the other computers got extremly slow internet connections.  pages like google , yahoo none would load for more than 10-20seconds on a high speed cable connection.  

Guess my main question , is it better for network bandwidth allocation to setup a domain that people must join, or does a SME DHCP divide up bandwidth decently?  Already decided going to make the move from Win2k Server to SME Server this weekend, but just wanted to see which method is more bandwidth friendly.  My plan was to create a DHCP setup that allocated specific IPs to specific MAC addresses...I still might go DNS , not sure.

[cactus]

For months now I've been running a Win2000 Server as domain controller and having upwards of 5 or 6 hosts (nothing huge) on the same cable connection.

Recently enabled DHCP and a user (first to do this) joined using DHCP, and after that all the other computers got extremly slow internet connections.  pages like google , yahoo none would load for more than 10-20seconds on a high speed cable connection.  

Guess my main question , is it better for network bandwidth allocation to setup a domain that people must join, or does a SME DHCP divide up bandwidth decently?  Already decided going to make the move from Win2k Server to SME Server this weekend, but just wanted to see which method is more bandwidth friendly.  My plan was to create a DHCP setup that allocated specific IPs to specific MAC addresses...I still might go DNS , not sure.

If I understand you correctly you have enabled DHCP for the SME server, but your windows server used to be the domain controller (and probably still is). By enabling dhcp on SME Server my guess is that you have now two servers trying to fight about who is going to hand out dhcp addresses. Normally you only have one (Primary) Domain Controller (PDC) in a network, you can have more Domain Controllers (Backup Domain Controllers: BCP's)but that will imply a lot of configuring and is certainly very hard to manage using a mixture of Windows and Linux (Samba) servers. What happens when you disable dhcp again? Does it improve?

[sicnus]

I didn't make much sense in my questions.

I have not setup SME yet, trying to make sure I know as much as I can before I make the leap.


Right now I'm using a windows server running Win2k Server and I was wondering , if on SME server , would network bandwidth be split up more evenly using DNS or DHCP ?

[duncan]

Bandwidth allocation has nothing to do with DHCP. Are you sure the settings being handed out by the DHCP server are correct?

[sicnus]

See I'm not sure what exactly controls network bandwidth allocation.

All I know is for past 6 months I ran a realiable network using a Win2k Server OS and a domain using static IP and TCP/IP settings.  Then I also enabled DHCP on the server and the first time a user connected using DHCP the network got extremely slow for everyone else.  I wasn't sure if there was a connection between the two.

This was all with windows , just wanted to make sure I wouldn't run into a problem with SME if I chose DHCP or static DNS settings.

[p-jones]

I am not so sure that you question has a lot to do with SME since you are running a Windows 2K server and now have problems after enabling DHCP.

The question to ask is whether or not you DHCP server is handing out the correct DNS and gateway settings. This is not a bandwith issue  but an issue of where your client has to go to resolve the domain name (DNS)and then reach that domain (gateway).

What I can tell you from experience is that setting up DHCP and DNS with SME is heaps easier than on W2K/W2k3 server. There is, in my view, a trade off. SMEcaters for the mot common settings.

READ the instructions/prompts at install time. FOLLOW THEM and it all just works. Thsi of course assumes that the upstream devices are set up correctly.

Some of the more esoteric things (like TFTP) are a bit easier in Windows than in SME but hey - they dont represent mainstream. In less than 10% of servers I have built, SME or Windows,  have I required something different from "out of the packet" fro DHCP and/or DNS.