CompuServe Messages

The analyzer I use reports packets per second and then converts that into a percentage of bandwidth. Ordinarily we swing somewhere between 5 and 10% with ordinary useage on a heavy day. I might peak way up during some extraordinary transfers, but that is all with "ordinary" office type users; word processing, I do review CPU percentages too, but that has never been a factor, even when my server was a 386. When I added in those 3 GIS users the useage went way up. The percentage of their time spent in moving large amounts of data was very high. I wasn't showing any significant numbers of errors anywhere on the system and their packets were all within normal parameters. I was able to graph out the system useage for a 48 hour period for the system as a whole and for each of the 3 GIS users and they were definately producing the load…Enough so that a seperate segment for them would be warranted. Incidentally, we were doing this as an experiment. Most parks, even a fairly large one, can't really afford to set up a seperate network to support a specific function like GIS. We wanted to see what impact a good sized GIS might have if it shared network resources with other users. Our useage was high, but probably not more than would be reasonable during peak fire season, or just before a resource management plan was due. I was watching the packet and collision rates very carefully and watching the quality of the packets. The errors within a packet can help you determine if collisions are caused by timing problems, driver problems, cable problems, or just simply too much stuff happening at once! Have a great weekend…glad this info was useful. I have gleaned so much from you folks over the months and was delighted to help out for a change.