Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has tried running the following combinations of Network/Client/NLM, and if so, are there any problems with this?

Novell NetWare V5.0 with Support Pack 6A

Win NT - V4.0 with Service Pack 6.

NLM Version - 5

Thanks

Not specifically but any NT/2000 client to NetWare 5.x running the NLM is very slow with OpenInsight. Arev is ok.

Should be a fix for this slow performance with OI, but have to get it as an upcoming Works release

Tony

The OI slowdown issue has been documented and should be fixed reasonably soon.

One thing I note is that you're probably "protocol stacking" (i.e., you're running both IPX and NT (TCP/IP?) simultaneously. If you're doing this, make sure that IPX/SPX is "on top" otherwise NT will bog down IPX/SPX.

Don C. Miller

C3 Inc.

Tony,

Could you explain what you mean by "arev is ok." I agree that Windows NT performs OK, but Windows 2000 is an entirely different matter on our Novell network. We find it barely usable, and our benchmarks confirm our feelings. We measure "transactions per second" and have tested a variety of W2K workstations. None has achieved more than 41 transactions per second. W9x and WNT machines, on the other hand, easily exceed 500 tps on far slower machines.

If you are getting good performance from AREV on Windows 2000 machines and Novell, would you please share how you have set them up. Perhaps we are just setting the darn things up wrong.

Dan

Tony, I thought of "a few" more questions.

All of our Windows 2000 workstations are new machines with W2K installed at the factory. We have a mix of Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 machines and get the same poor performance from all of them. Did you upgrade existing machines to W2K, or was W2K installed at the factory?

We have tested the W2K machines without Service Packs, and with SP1 and SP2. Have you installed any other patches on W2K machines, such as any of the Microsoft Hotfixes?

What version of the Novell Client are you using? What non-default settings do you use in the Client?

We are on NetWare 4.11. Are you on NetWare 5 or 5.1? What Novell service pack? Have you installed any other Novell patches that are not in the Service Packs, such as the fix for the turbo FAT?

To give us a general point of reference, how many seconds does it take AREV to start up and display the main menu when you log into SYSPROG on a W2K workstation? How about if you log into an application and attach data directories on the way in?

I found an entry that you made last June indicating you did not have performance problems at that time on W2K and AREV. Was your network substantially the same back then?

Sorry for all of the questions, but we have spent a huge amount of time on this, and are even in the process of switching to a Windows 2000 server due to the extremely poor performance we are getting from AREV on Novell. Personally, I would prefer to stay with Novell if we can get it to work better with AREV.

Dan

Sorry for delay, been away.

Just to clarify - the original message mentioned both OI and Arev and both NT and W2K. OI slow with either client on Novell. ARev is not. My throwaway line 'Arev is ok' masked some of the truth. For us NT Client/AREV/Novell performs just as well as 95 98 client. The W2K client is slower but still useable with Arev but not with OI.

I should be back in the office next week and will do some tests for you. It's fair to say that we only have AREV development running rather than any live systems in house so perhaps it hasn't been as noticable - certainly my coding speed doesn't seem affected!

Tony

Thanks Tony,

Try a select against a non-indexed field in a non-trivial table using W95/98/NT, then try it again on W2K; or just simply copy several thousand records from one table to another.

Any kind of performance comparison you could provide would be helpful. If performance on W2K at your site is comparable to W95/98/NT I would like to know more about your configuration.

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