Hi Al and thank you for your response. To answer your questions:
1) In regard to "advanced networking stuff" I am not sure where/how to find
that kind of thing. I guess I can poke around. In calling Intel about this
I woudl have thought they could/woudl point me in this direction (if needed)
since both the server NIC and the workstation NICs are Intel (actually that is
not strictly true, one of the worst performers under Windows XP has a Realtek
NIC). But, yes, what you are suggesting has been on my mind ever since I ran
across that KB 968991 article that I mention elsewhere in this (rather long)
posting - problem with that 968991 article is that it does not strictly apply
to my circumstances. But it talks about Intel Advanced I/O stuff which is
what you are pointing me to. Why Intel would not have known about such an
issue is a mystery to me and for these various reasons I have therefore held
off on applying the 968991 hotfix - do you think I shoudl do it?
2) In regard to the SBS BPA I am a bit embarrassed to say that I had not run
it. Why? Because with the BPA for the Exchange piece built right in to the
O/S, I guess I assumed that the BPA tool for SBS would be built right into
the SBS console alongside all the other error checking that tool constantly
does. Anyway once I saw your note I immediately downloaded the SBS 2008 BPA.
Right off the bat I did show the only critical error (expected), which was
that the DNS A resource record was pointing to both NIC's on the server. As
mentioned elsehwere in this mammoth post, the second serve NIC got turned on
recently only as an experiemnt and it did not change things at all. Anyway
this mornign I shut off that second NIC again and ran BPA again and the
critical error is gone for DNS. There are no critical errors. The remaining
non-critical issues are, of course, of concern but I have no idea where to
focus/get started -- I need to solve the slow network problem before I do any
of the more refined fine-tuning stuff - as I am sure you can appreciate. But
perhaps the key to my performance issus is in these issues, and I have posted
them below (below my next and last answer to your questions) -- if there is
any feedback you can provide I would most appreciate it.
3) You ask about logs on the server and the workstations. Yes I have
checked and not seen anything obvious but I agree, I need to do some careful
analysis there, which I will proceed to do. If you have any suggestions as
to what to focus on in the logs that would be appreciated.
Thank you and here are the issues shown by BPA at this time:
All Issues
Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 :
The server RIVERSERV is running Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1;
however, Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2007 is available. For more
information, see "You cannot install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 on a
Windows Small Business Server 2008-based computer" in the Microsoft Knowledge
Base at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163940.
Add-On Congestion Control Provider :
Add-On Congestion Control Provider is set to ctcp. To disable Add-On
Congestion Control Provider, click Start, and in the Search box type
administrator. At the command prompt, run the following command: netsh int
tcp set global congestion=none
Firewall is disabled :
The Firewall has been disabled and by default is enabled on Windows Small
Business Server
IE Enhanced Security disabled :
IE Enhanced Security is currently disabled for Administrators. To enable IE
Enhanced Security go to Start/Server Manager and click on the Configure IE
ESC link on the right.
Local activation permission to the IIS WAMREG Admin Service required :
The Network Service is missing local activation permissions to the IIS
WAMREG admin Service in accordance with the event ID 10016 in the system
event log. For more information, see KB "Event ID error messages 10016 and
10017 are logged in the System log after you install Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0" at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=128063. Note: This
warning will continue to appear until at least 24 hours have passed since the
most recent occurrence of event 10016.
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level :
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level is set to normal. To disable Receive
Window Auto-Tuning Level, click Start, and in the Search box type "command."
in the results, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as
administrator. At the command prompt, run the following command: netsh int
tcp set global autotuning=disabled
Receive-Side Scaling State :
Receive-Side Scaling State is set to enabled. To disable Receive-Side
Scaling, click Start, and in the Search box type "command." in the results,
right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. At the
command prompt, run the following command: netsh int tcp set global
rss=disabled
remote.riverwebnh.com does not exist in the BackConnectionHostNames registry
key :
The BackConnectionHostNames key should include the value