>I had a LAN fall flat on its face a couple times this week because of very
>heavy load. There are about 25 PCs, ranging from 486/66 with Intel
>EtherExpress 16 to Pentium/75 with Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 PCI running a
>Foxpro 2.6 for Windows app off the server. There are three HP 4 Plus printer
>
>1 on the server, 2 on JetDirect cards operating as queue servers.
>Finally, a faster server with additional IO channels will help throughput
>through the server, but it doesn't seem to me that would reduce the demands 
>the segment. Will a faster server aggravate our collision problems?
I think you're going to have to invest in a protocol analyzer and monitor
the network to find out for sure where your heaviest traffic is
originating. You might possibly have a jabbering NIC on the segment too,
which is hard to find without a protocol analyzer, short of disconnecting
nodes one by one and watching the packets received stats on the server. If
the traffic is originating from a clearly defined source, it should be easy
enough to segment the network to keep the collisions down.
Ethernet will calculate a random time interval to retransmit a packet after
a collision. This is a function of the NIC, not software.
A faster server won't help in this case because the wire is already
saturated with traffic.
Later,
David Nevala, CNE
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