Posted by Robert G Laurin on March 24, 2004 at 09:48:05:
In Reply to: XP SLOWDOWN NOVELL SERVER posted by =?iso-8859-1?Q?=22Duperron=2C_Yves_=5C=28LGV-Qu=E9 on Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:36:01 :
Yves, the problem with XP over a Netware network, may have more to do with the way Windows sharing is happening.
When we introduced XP to our all Win 9x Novell network, the slowdowns were simply intolerable.
To this day, I beleive that the problem is in the way Windows handle the elections for Browse Master in the Windows sharing/workgroup networking (windows-to-windows peer-to-peer networking). We had to tweak the registry entries to force the stations not to try to be a Browse Master in the browser elections.
We've limitted Browse master to ONE station per workgroup and ONE secondary browse master. All the other were forced to Browse Master OFF or NO.
We usually picked machines which are always ON and preferably Windows SERVERS. The more recent with latest Windows version were best picks.
Note that we do not use any Domains or Domain Controler.
There might also be issues depending on how you configured your sations in regards to IP and IPX. We originally have Netbios over IPX/SPX and IP was NOT bound to any service and/or client software. IP was an outbound protocol only. This worked great for a long time until we started using some pure IP devices and some IP based software (like printer configuration software like HP's JetAdmin or WebAdmin). Once you have a mix of Netbios over IP and IPX the results are very so-so...
We recently converted all our stations to use IPX only for Novell with no Netbios and bound IP with the Windows Clients and Netbios. The result was a network-wide virus infectation that once cleaned left us with a more stable (and fast) network.
Make sure you have up-to-date anti-virus on ALL your stations. Avoid AVG as it misses the blasted BLASTER worm. I'm not sure about Norton either. eTrust was my favorite for a while, but it does miss many recent virus.
If you use a corpoprate firewall, make sure ports 9, 67, 68, 135, 137, 138, 139, 445, 513, 520, 631, 1900 and 2222 are closed tight.
If you need more info about the Browse Master registry entries, I'll dig em up in my notes and get it to you