Re:heh, tell my guys over at Wiley Hall I said hello.
<—purdue, 1993.
Re:haha, DSP at Purdue University (big 10 school). There is currently no budget but hopefully will be soon enough to get this running smoothly!
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Also what school is this at in case any one of us are close by.
John
for real. I'm smellin a 4000 dollar job.
Re:Also what school is this at in case any one of us are close by.
John
Re:is there a budget allocated for the project ?
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
if you have managed switches, I would setup MRTG to start with (to monitor port usage) and that may help you track down bandwidth hogs.
I would also do a port mirror on the port the router is on and run NTOP to find malware/worm spewing boxes, and also identify what they are doing to hog the network.
This guy has problems with filesharing on his own subnets and you want him to do MRTG? :confused:
Help him with his problem. Everything else is secondary.
Yet if you read the thread more thoroughly you would have found that he also asked about his degrading internet performance too.
With that many computers letting them bicker amongst each other over Master Browser is asking for trouble. And the solution was to get some sort of server to manage DHCP, WINS and DNS.
As for degrading network performance, that can be a much bigger picture. Assuming that all of the hardware and wiring is fine you have to do some datalogging to find where the problem is. My guess that on a frat network you might have some malware running around and of course BitTorrent, games, video and file downloads, etc.
My solution for that would be to use the switches and router to prioritize traffic and dump stuff like filesharing and BitTorrent into a low priority setting. Plus I would isolate all clients except for access to the servers, which would all run less malware prone OS' like Linux. Plus some sort of centralized threat management product would be ideal to proxy information travelling around the network.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
if you have managed switches, I would setup MRTG to start with (to monitor port usage) and that may help you track down bandwidth hogs.
I would also do a port mirror on the port the router is on and run NTOP to find malware/worm spewing boxes, and also identify what they are doing to hog the network.
This guy has problems with filesharing on his own subnets and you want him to do MRTG? :confused:
Help him with his problem. Everything else is secondary.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Wow, even this conversation is getting way over my head.
I am giving thought to having a networking consultant come and help set up our network properly. Here are the three main items we use on our network (Verizon DSL: 3Mb down, 1.5Mb up)
Router: Linksys RV042 (Has a great deal of functions but I do not really know how to use any of them)
Switches (x2): Netgear FSM726 (Managed Switches) (these switches are great but, once again, most of the functions on them are beyond my comprehension.
Do you guys know of any tricks I can use with this equipment to get me set up in the right direction? Do you think hiring a consultant is a good idea or a waste of money? I appreciate all of your help (even if some of it is over my head already 
)
everyone just told you what you need to do. This is an issue of training the users to try \\machinename\ first, and then \\machineIP\ second. Without servers (which you can't really do much with anyway because a domain is out of the question, this is really your best shot. Don't hire a consultant unless it's paying Spidey007 a few bones to sit on the phone with you for a little bit and explain everything to you until you get it 
Re:if you have managed switches, I would setup MRTG to start with (to monitor port usage) and that may help you track down bandwidth hogs.
I would also do a port mirror on the port the router is on and run NTOP to find malware/worm spewing boxes, and also identify what they are doing to hog the network.
Re:Wow, even this conversation is getting way over my head.
I am giving thought to having a networking consultant come and help set up our network properly. Here are the three main items we use on our network (Verizon DSL: 3Mb down, 1.5Mb up)
Router: Linksys RV042 (Has a great deal of functions but I do not really know how to use any of them)
Switches (x2): Netgear FSM726 (Managed Switches) (these switches are great but, once again, most of the functions on them are beyond my comprehension.
Do you guys know of any tricks I can use with this equipment to get me set up in the right direction? Do you think hiring a consultant is a good idea or a waste of money? I appreciate all of your help (even if some of it is over my head already )
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Ah, I didn't know network browsing used WINS.
It does if a WINS server is available.
If a Windows Server is available, you should be running WINS.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
WINS service isn't required if all your machines are not older than Windows 2000. They can use the DNS server to resolve NETBIOS names. However, there are some applications that require WINS service.
Text (http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2193831)
yeah, like that whole network browsing thing no longer works.
Ah, I didn't know network browsing used WINS.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
WINS service isn't required if all your machines are not older than Windows 2000. They can use the DNS server to resolve NETBIOS names. However, there are some applications that require WINS service.
Text (http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2193831)
yeah, like that whole network browsing thing no longer works.
Re:WINS service isn't required if all your machines are not older than Windows 2000. They can use the DNS server to resolve NETBIOS names. However, there are some applications that require WINS service.
Text (http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2193831)
Re:As guy mentioned earlier, if you can set up a Windows Server as the DHCP, DNS, and WINS server for the entire network, your network browsing issues will magically go away. Just be sure to turn off any other DHCP servers on the network.
Monitoriing and controlling bandwidth usage is tougher. It'll either require a very sophisticated hardware router, an internal proxy server (but you probably have no way to FORCE the users to use the proxy server), or you run all the traffic through a PC software router that monitors traffic by IP address.
Re:Get bigger tubes! Is this the Unversity's internet or your own?
Do all the ethernet jacks connect to the University's main switch or your own switch? If they connect to the Unversity's, you can't really do anything about bandwidth control. If they connect to your own, you're probably looking at a managed switch.
Re:i should have already mentioned this but we already have multiple dedicated servers, nearly a half terabyte on them!
It's mostly people who want to share things quickly but can't. This network instability is also now leading to degrading internet access. I can't/don't have the resources to track down the problem.
Any easy programs or commands i can use to see who is abusing the bandwidth in a network?
Re:I don't think people would appreciate limited control under Active Directory. Just keep the workgroup network and buy a cheap dell server like everyone suggested. Linux seems to be favorable for a small file sever setup.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
browsing the network sucks, use UNC paths, \\computername\share instead of cratpastic neighborhood
That's what I was thinking. Just ask all of the computer users to make a small donation so you can build a big file server and have them access it that way.
Plus if he is using a managed switch I would try to isolate all of the clients except to the file server. That would help minimize risk and recovery time in case of a malware breakout.
Re:welcome to browsing problems.
Make sure netbios over TCP is enabled in the network control panel. Make sure there are no other protocols loaded. This needs to happen on each and every machine. Make sure their netbios node type is set to Broadcast. Make sure netbios over TCP (NBT) is bound to both the server and workstation service. All of this happens in the network control panel. Make sure every computer has one and only one NIC active.
Not only that, if somebody reboots or shuts off their machine you can have problems.
You're best bet might be if you can run a WINS and DNS server, and point everybody to that via DHCP. DHCP should also hand out the netbios node type as hybrid. with 50 people, it really is begging for a server of somekind. If for nothing else than to help with name resolution/browsing.
without a name server, browsing can be very spotty with unusual symptoms as there is no authorative computer to maintain this information. It's not uncommon for things to never truly settle down as people reboot their machines left and right in an effort to fix it. that just makes it worse. It can take hours for the master browser/browselist to be accurate.
But normally if network neighboorhood isn't working, you should still be able to access computers with \\computername\sharename. If you can't do that then there are other troubleshooting steps to follow.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
….just get a file server – make it the DC and use AD for user management, you could even set up mapped network drive storage for the users, if someone wnats something to share – they can just share it themselves…prettty dern simple.
except there are probably lots of XP Home boxes in the network, and there is no way I would join my box to that domain.
Plus, how do I join my linux box…
Re:….just get a file server – make it the DC and use AD for user management, you could even set up mapped network drive storage for the users, if someone wnats something to share – they can just share it themselves…prettty dern simple.
Re:Maybe it would be easier to set up one file server and let everyone access it. User management would be a b!tch though, unless you opened it up to anyone, but that could be dangerous.
Re:browsing the network sucks, use UNC paths, \\computername\share instead of cratpastic neighborhood
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Some people can't even see anybody in the workgroup…
This sounds like firewall software on the client machines getting in the way.
and some can't access certain people's computers while others can access those same computers.
Could be that the ones that can't connect disabled Simple File Sharing.
I have no idea why there are all these problems now!
Because you're dealing with 20+ client machines, all owned and adminstered by different people, all with their own software and settings. It's going to be a mess in a workgroup.
One possible suspect is that maybe the people are not joining the correct workgroup?
Could be. That would mean they wouldn't see anything in the workgroup part of Network Neighborhood, but they should still be able to work down from "Entire Network".
I have also been told that a single computer (user) controls who can see/view/get-onto the network.
Kind of, but not exactly. There is going to be a machine that considers itself a "browse master" that centralizes some of the information, but as long as all the machines are on the same subnet you shouldn't really have any problems due to that. Digging into the details of the browsing protocol gets very ugly very quickly, but I don't think any of that concerns your situation.
Re:How to Net View command (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=141229)
You can use the NET VIEW command to perform most of the browsing functions available in Network Neighborhood or My Computer, except that you cannot view a list of workgroups.
Re:thanks, I have tried the Net View in CMD but it does not really list all the computers in my workgroup does it? I have also tried to \\computername and get the same response. I will try to enforce the file and printer sharing and see if that is the problem. Any more suggestions?
Re:You must enable File and Printer sharing in each computer's firewall. Sometimes the workgroup viewerwon't work correctly, so you'll need to access each computer by their FQDN. You can do this by entering \\computer name in run.
Try Net View in CMD.
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