Monitoring local network performance over time

[vbrad]

I'm interested in tracking local network performance to have information for those situations where people say things like the software is slow lately.

Is testing periodically how long it takes to upload and download a file over the local network and storing the data in a central database
a valid way of keeping tabs on network performance from clients to a server?

I vaguely know about iperf but this is something I could implement easily because I already have a central database and a shared folder on the server and software on each machine that could easily be altered to accommodate this.

So if a small file was uploaded and downloaded every n seconds and then the time taken for each stored in a table with columns like
datetime, computername, filesize, upload time, upload speed, download time, download speed.

Is this too simplistic?
Are there other things I could easily monitor in vb6, ping response times, total network traffic from a particular machine.
I am asking from a position of ignorance really, as may be obvious!

[Zvoni]

Well, one, obviously "overkill", way would be to figure out, how to use/access the wireshark libraries (which are Open Source)

[dilettante]

Passive monitoring is all that would be acceptable. Stealing the user's bandwidth is rude at best. Some are paying hard cash to use metered connections.

Imagine if every program on the user's machine did that. Why are you so special?

[vbrad]

Passive monitoring is all that would be acceptable. Stealing the user's bandwidth is rude at best. Some are paying hard cash to use metered connections.

Imagine if every program on the user's machine did that. Why are you so special?

These are local LAN networks in small businesses (often just workgroups).
The software we provide is what they use for basically everything, sales, accounts, client communications via email, sms, mail merge etc, it's the reason they got the computers.

[Zvoni]

Then recommend using wireshark, and then you can stay out of that minefield

i‘m speaking out of experience.
One day users complained about a very slow network, they attributed to the ERP we use.
Wireshark reveiled, that one of our fileservers was replicating itself with another server some 150 miles away in another branch of the company.
It had nothing to do with our ERP, and research resulted in an admonishment of the idiot admin, who scheduled the task.

[vbrad]

Then recommend using wireshark, and then you can stay out of that minefield

i‘m speaking out of experience.
One day users complained about a very slow network, they attributed to the ERP we use.
Wireshark reveiled, that one of our fileservers was replicating itself with another server some 150 miles away in another branch of the company.
It had nothing to do with our ERP, and research resulted in an admonishment of the idiot admin, who scheduled the task.

I wish I could but over time I've dug a hole for myself. (btw all the traffic I'm talking about is local, the server and database are all on their network, I just remote
in).
Most of them don't have anyone who would have the first clue what to do with wireshark and they don't pay for ongoing hardware support, some
would have set up all the pcs themselves, some even still have a few xp machines lying around that they are reluctant to replace. They're very cost conscious and I've had
a lot of mission creep down the years.
The businesses I deal with range from a handful of employees up to probably 50 at most. When anything goes wrong I get a call because it's "our software that isn't working"
or is slow etc.
I'm just looking for some info I can maybe export to a csv and run myself to see if I can spot issues and maybe be able to compare with other users' networks that don't have issues.
Thanks for your advice.

[dilettante]

What led you to suspect a LAN performance issue?

Things like sharing a file-based database can often be optimized to use less locking and network I/O. There are limits to what can be done, but can be worth investigating. Periodic compacting can go a long way.

Simple deployments to users who don't have local support staff may preclude moving to a client-server DBMS. They require a server and at least some care and feeding. But a shared file database also needs a server, so you already have half the burden.

[vbrad]

What led you to suspect a LAN performance issue?

Sometimes it's one client only that has the issue, other times when i run the client program on the server pc it runs well while everywhere else is slow.
I tell them all I prefer an ethernet network but many have gradually moved to a mix of cabled and wifi and a few only use wifi. Sometimes the wifi is not great, sometimes I discover that a machine
has its ethernet adaptor disabled for some reason and is on wifi. Another time I discovered a place had installed some kind of syncing software that was using huge bandwidth and locking files.
Some backup softwares or how they are set up can cause problems.
Sometimes the av takes a dislike to the latest update, sometimes the av "forgets" its excluded items, sometimes someone has installed a new av. Sometimes you remote into a pc and it's got a desktop stuffed with program shortcuts for god knows what.
Sometimes they change phone/internet provider and get a new router/modem which screws up the DNS or DHCP
It could well be my ignorance but a lot of the time I cannot see any rhyme or reason to why some places with better machines have issues while another, busier place with an inferior server never gives trouble.
Sometimes places will have trouble for a period and then it all goes away (loose connections?).
Recently I got a call, turned out the issue was 0 bytes available on c drive but to them it was our software failing to save a file.
I feel like a lot of the time I am in the dark about what the problem is/was.
It makes me reluctant to make firm diagnoses or advise upgrading to better hardware etc.
So I'm just looking to store some information that can help me.

Things like sharing a file-based database can often be optimized to use less locking and network I/O. There are limits to what can be done, but can be worth investigating. Periodic compacting can go a long way.
Simple deployments to users who don't have local support staff may preclude moving to a client-server DBMS. They require a server and at least some care and feeding. But a shared file database also needs a server, so you already have half the burden.

For years we used a file-based database now it's a proper server database.
People using wifi was the last straw for that.

[dee-u]

Perhaps you could start with the ping response time, and/or check if there are any timeouts.

[vbrad]

Perhaps you could start with the ping response time, and/or check if there are any timeouts.

Sorry for not replying. Yes, thanks I think that might be a good idea. I haven't done anything about it yet but I hope to get around to it.
The motivation is that a few places seem to be always having network issues while most others never have any and I'd like to have data
to hopefully be able to show show them that the problem is their network rather than the software.