Top 10 Causes

PerformanceVision 2016
for Network Slowness
Contents

Symptoms of network
slowness

Possible causes
How can you know? 4 main symptoms
You can track these with monitoring tool using SNMP polling and packet analysis.

Slowndown
Increase in latency (measured through ICMP testing or TCP connection times)
User Complaints

Disconnections
Users get disconnected from the applications and can reconnect afterwards

Outage
Network services and applications become unavailable.

End User Complaints

Helpdesk reports
The 10 Most Common Causes
1 - Hardware Failure
Cable defect (client or server end)
Cable patching

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2 Configuration of a network
switch
A defective configuration induces packet loss, like
bad interface negotiation, physical errors, etc.
3 Network Loop
There is more than one layer 2 path between two
end point devices.
For more info, read:
http://blog.performancevision.com/how-to-
identify-and-quickly-fix-switching-loops
4 Bandwidth congestion
The quantity of data sent to/from a given
destination exceeds the network capacity.
This can be generated by:
Capacity is below the business application
requirements.
Unwanted network usage (web browsing)
Defective configuration (backups, updates running
outside of the normal time-window)
5- Network latency increase
The time which is necessary to send the packets
through the network has increased due to a
change in the route / path or a defective network
device.
For more information, read:
The links between latency, packet loss and throughput
What drives network latency
6 - Shaping, Optimization,
Filtering Device
QoS Settings slow down the transfer or reduce
the network capacity which is available for a given
application.
Filtering device resets / blocks connections.
Some causes may NOT be network-related
7- Host Resource Outage
Resource outage is impacting the data transfer
speed (client or server-side)
Read this article for more info: The meaning of 0-
windows
8- Application Server
Processing Time or Errors
The server takes too long to respond either for all
requests or only certain requests.
Some requests generate application errors
Check out this white paper to understand how to
detect this: Analyzing application transaction in
real time
9- Quantity of Data
The quantity of data sent and received by the
application is large and takes too much time to
transfer through the network.
This may be due to a configuration or an
application defect which sends an excessive data
set to a client.
Read this use case for more info: 7 easy steps to
troubleshoot the performance of a database-
driven application.
Common Services
Some services are responding slowly and
encounter errors:
Your DNS server respond too slow or your client first
request a wrong server name before querying the right
one.
Your authentication server is responding too slow.
For a concrete use, please refer to DNS, key to
application performance.
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