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Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Traffic problems under Window 2008

From: Martin Visser <martinvisser99@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 14:22:24 +1000
Switches do not hold onto packets for 4 seconds. They either forward them within milliseconds or drop them in the event of congestion. (They may have queues but they would not extend to more than a few megabytes of packets, and hence are very quickly emptied into the output interface - you would have evidence of congestion (fully saturated bandwidth) on the ingress or egress interface if this were occuring).
 
I would interpret those delays as there being nothing for the client to send, or it is waiting for some ACKnowledgement from the other end, or a timer (for say a unanswered DNS or name lookup) has expired. It is possible that the first was sent but because of errors was dropped silently. If you are getting packet loss because of errors, this would show up in the device port statistics. Duplex issues can cause similar problems, but not likely to see seconds of delay. Also you would expect to see collision errors on the interface configured as half-duplex if that is the case (usually also best seen in the port statistics on the device).
 
The fact that 172.18.100.18 is doing a Netbios Name Service broadcast query for a loopback (127.0.0.1) based service already worries me that you have a misconfiguration or non-answering name service. So you may have an application or OS config issue.
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 1:26 AM, Eddie Grogan <eddiegrogan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello,

 

I am running traffic between a Windows 2008 server and switch (via a router). While traffic will run perfectly for days, we occasionally see small delays on the network which bring down our software. Typically, we might see a couple of blockages of aprox 5 seconds in duration. We have only starting seeing these problems since we moved to Windows 2008. On Window 2003, everything worked perfectly. Now, I am not sure if this is a problem with the OS or perhaps some type of OS incompatibility issue with our hardware.

 

Here is a quick snippet of where things start to wrong in our logs.

16223   0.000456           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535013 Ack=4164690 Win=253 Len=646

16224   0.099948           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4164690 Ack=535659 Win=16738 Len=0

16225   1.179883           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16226   0.000709           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16227   3.052179           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4164690 Ack=535659 Win=16738 Len=492

16228   0.019502           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535659 Ack=4165182 Win=251 Len=32

16229   0.047537           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4165182 Ack=535691 Win=16706 Len=0

16230   0.000332           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535691 Ack=4165182 Win=251 Len=64

16231   0.099530           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4165182 Ack=535755 Win=16642 Len=0

16232   1.393205           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535755 Ack=4165182 Win=251 Len=34

16233   0.006954           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4165182 Ack=535789 Win=16608 Len=0

Note:  Our switch will ping the server every 6 seconds.

 

In general, we would not expect to see any communication delays between then switch and the server. The max response time is aprox 300ms but generally response time is much lower.  But at frame 16227, we see that it takes almost 4.2 seconds (3.05 + 1.17) for the switch to send out the next packet. I think this  is interesting because in between the switch was able to ping the server without any delays which suggests to me that the network is still healthy. At frame 16232, we see that the server takes 1.4 seconds to respond to the previous packet (i.e. ACK).

 

A little later in the logs, we see even more delays, only this time they are all originating on the switch side:

16293   0.099612           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4208432 Ack=535915 Win=17491 Len=0

16294   0.379674           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16295   0.000428           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16296   3.733783           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP       ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4208432 Ack=535915 Win=17520 Len=495                              -

16297   0.200446           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [ACK] Seq=535915 Ack=4208927 Win=254 Len=0

16298   0.205381           172.18.100.18    224.0.0.252       IGMP    V2 Membership Report / Join group 224.0.0.252

16299   0.473254           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535915 Ack=4208927 Win=254 Len=21

16300   0.006626           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4208927 Ack=535936 Win=17520 Len=0

16301   1.380183           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16302   0.000726           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16303   1.855978           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16304   0.206693           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4208927 Ack=535936 Win=17520 Len=510

16305   0.200422           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [ACK] Seq=535936 Ack=4209437 Win=252 Len=0

16306   0.342543           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16307   0.750224           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16308   0.283679           172.18.100.18    224.9.9.2           IGMP    V2 Membership Report / Join group 224.9.9.2

16309   0.467106           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16310   0.749850           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16311   0.750133           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.255 NBNS    Name query NB 127.0.0.1,4001<00>

16312   0.392744           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16313   0.000770           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16314   2.094337           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP       ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4209437 Ack=535936 Win=17520 Len=510

16315   0.200015           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [ACK] Seq=535936 Ack=4209947 Win=256 Len=0

16316   3.704503           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16317   0.000520           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16318   3.777418           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP       ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4209947 Ack=535936 Win=17520 Len=510

16319   0.209945           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [ACK] Seq=535936 Ack=4210457 Win=254 Len=0

16320   2.012220           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16321   0.000599           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16322   5.740877           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP       ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [PSH, ACK] Seq=4210457 Ack=535936 Win=17520 Len=510

16323   0.203816           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP      49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [ACK] Seq=535936 Ack=4210967 Win=252 Len=0

16324   0.054286           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    ICMP    Echo (ping) request

16325   0.000921           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    ICMP    Echo (ping) reply

16326   5.611319           172.18.100.18    172.18.100.15    TCP       49235 > ddi-tcp-1 [PSH, ACK] Seq=535936 Ack=4210967 Win=252 Len=21

16327   0.007736           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    TCP      ddi-tcp-1 > 49235 [ACK] Seq=4210967 Ack=535957 Win=17520 Len=0

 

When we look at the first delay at frame 16296, we see a 4 second time lag to the previous data frame (i.e. 16293). The subsequent blockages have even larger delays - Frames 16314 (5.7sec), 16318 (7.4 sec), 16322 (7.7 sec) and 16326 (5.6 sec). All of these delays are originating on the switch side. I don’t see any real delays on the server side responding to the data packets or the ping requests. The above traces also show that there was other activity on the network. I can see a lot of NetBios and Router activity at this time but I don’t know if this is impacting.

 

Looking at the rest of the sniffer logs I can see a large number of malformed packets. Here is a typically example

4774     0.000113           172.18.100.15    172.18.100.18    UCP      Roaming reset (Result) [checksum invalid][Malformed Packet]

In all cases, the malformed packets originated from the switch. Again, I am not sure how significant this is.

 

I would be grateful if anyone could provide any insight into the above.

 

Thanks

Eddie

 

 


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