Workshop

Figure 11.8 A monitor session.
We keep the System Monitor minimized and run the problem application. Yes indeed, it’s slow. We’re
seeing wide-area speeds on a LAN connection. Right away we know that there’s truly a speed problem
on the network; it has nothing to do with his workstation.
Or does it? We have a different server that runs another department’s stuff, so we decide to do the same
measurements on that server using the same application. In this case, the measurements are more in line
with what we’re seeing on other workstations on the LAN. It seems that this particular server and this
person’s workstation are not happy with each other. The five minutes we spent with the System Monitor
accomplished a couple of important things:
• This person is not imagining things; we have objective data to prove it.
• We’ve discovered that the workstation can connect to a different server without the slowdown
problem; we now have a workaround while we further diagnose the problem server or
workstation.
In this particular case, the server is definitely a problem. It’s not a Microsoft server; it’s a UNIX server
running an older version of an SMB server. However, the server is talking to other PCs just fine.
Something about the age of the server and the client software on the user’s PC isn’t jiving properly.
We (very carefully) reinstall the Microsoft file and print client to the workstation, consistent with other
workstations in the department; then we reapply the Windows 95 Service Pack 1. In this case, because
we’re dealing with a VIP, we make a backup of his hard drive—just in case we cause more problems
through this process. After the application of the client and the service pack, we test again with the
System Monitor. The problem is gone, and the VIP is happy.
We’ll talk more about network throughput in Hour 22, “The Network Is Slow!”
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