Seven new ideas to improve the speed of the network

How to maximize the speed and performance of the network has always been a concern of enterprise network managers. This article will focus on how to further improve the speed and performance of the network, giving seven recommendations from industry veterans and network experts.

Using jumbo packets

Using giant packet technology can improve the performance of the network. Switches and network interface cards that support jumbo packets can handle maximum lengths beyond the IEEE standard (1.5k). Packets, some devices support packets longer than 9k bits, but there is no uniform standard for jumbo packet length. Industry insiders pointed out that for high-speed Ethernet such as Gigabit and 10G networks, the use of giant packet technology is more effective, and many vendors including 3Com, Cisco, Extreme Networks, etc. have already provided products that support this technology. A network using this technology needs to set the switch to the megapacket mode and must use the same vendor's product, otherwise there may be problems such as packet loss or decomposition. At the same time, experts suggest that the use of giant packet technology should be limited, such as using the technology only on network connections such as server-to-server file transfers or backup jobs.

Checking Network Connections

Network performance degradation may be due to simple physical connectivity issues, but network administrators cannot ignore these issues because cable or connector damage may only result in packets The loss of the network does not make the network completely paralyzed, so such problems are more subtle. A network sniffer can be used to detect abnormal packet retransmissions, which is often a symptom of cable problems. Environmental factors can also cause degradation in network performance, such as cables in the vicinity of elevators or heating systems, which are subject to electromagnetic fields when transmitting data. Experts recommend adding a protective enclosure to cables in such an environment, and it is best to upgrade all cables in the network to Category 5 or Category 6 cables.

Using full-duplex mode

The network card at both ends of the network connection has the highest performance in full-duplex mode, and the network card on the PC is easily set by the user to be inadvertently or intentionally set by the user to half. Duplex mode. Monitoring the connection speed is important to find out if the duplex settings of the two ports match. Experts recommend using a software called Multi-router Traffic Grapher to monitor the performance of the network connection to ensure that the full-duplex setting is turned on at both ends.

Using Layer 3 Switching

One way to improve network performance is to implement Layer 3 switching on switches connected to desktop machines. Many switches offer IP routing capabilities and Layer 3 switching-based QoS for LAN edge switches. With the Layer 3 switching capability, the switch does not send every packet to the router. For example, two nodes in different virtual LANs are connected to the same switch. The Layer 3 edge switch can perform communication services between the two nodes. routing.

Adding Route Control

Implementing Route Control or Route Optimization at a site with more than one Internet connection is a configuration called Multi-Homing. The route control device of the site is connected to the network as BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), which is a routing mechanism to determine which Internet connection to use. This choice is based on which connection will be reached with the least number of router hops to reach the destination. Routing control can choose the best route based on the combined factors of performance and price, which is better than BGP.

Packet Shaping

Packet Shaping is used to put network traffic in the queue according to its importance, such as critical applications and delay-sensitive applications will get higher priority. This can be achieved by limiting the bandwidth occupied by some applications or blocking certain applications.

Using compression technology

Place compression equipment on sites connected to both ends of the WAN to scan traffic. The principle is to replace the duplicate mode with a shorter mode to reduce the need to pass The number of bytes transmitted over the WAN, which allows for more efficient use of limited bandwidth. In addition, using the acceleration program of the SSL layer, the number of bytes of the webpage content can be reduced by compression technology and the data unnecessary for rebuilding the webpage can be removed to accelerate the transmission of the Internet SSL, and the TCP connection request to be processed by the application server can also be reduced. Number of.