Good
Day,
I have noticed over
time the network seems to slow down. So I have installed ethereal on my
computer and noticed the following.
I have got a
switched network with about 1600 devices connected to it.I noticed that I am
able to sniff a lot of packets that should have been switched - Directed
Traffic. When I check the data packets I noticed that there is a destination MAC
Address in the data packet. I connected the packet sniffer to a different
section on the network and it is the same. When I check on the switches the MAC
Address is not in the ARP table. I have increased the aging time of the arps
cache and it has made no difference. My main switches are Dell Poweredge 5324
and the rest are a mix between 3Com and Cabletron. The switches are not even
sending a broadcast packet asking for the MAC Address of the Server or Computer.
When I check the port where the server is connected to it doesn't show the MAC
Address of the server.
The main problem is
with a web based application that run a SQL server in the background. There
are four IIS servers running with microsoft NLB (Network Load Balancing) between
them. Two servers are connected in one switch and the other two in a anouther
switch. The replys from the server to the clients are directed. It is only the
traffic that is going to the servers that are being broadcast. The servers have
got two nics in them. One is for the NLB which the clients access and the other
is used for a maintenance connection.
I know that this is
not about ethereal but a network problem, but I am hoping that there is someone
who knows what the problem is and will be able to assist me to solve
it.
Thanks
Carsten
Holfelder
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