Delays in connecting to printers on LAN

Originally Posted by Mohammed Seidu

I am currently in charge of a very slow LAN comprising of 40 machines. I welcome any means of improving the speed on this network. My most pressing problem is with the printers on the network. They are mostly inaccessible by machines other than the ones they are connected to. Any suggestion would be welcomed.

Thank you all in advance.

Originally Posted by sicarie

LAN Speed is usually a combination of both network hardware as well as individual device usage. If your computers themselves are busy doing things like computational algorithms or are just filled with malware, they will not be able to utilize the network as the CPU is being used for something else.

My recommendation would be to 1) make the printers network printers (you said that they were directly connected to several devices, which is probably not the best way to go with 15 printers), and then 2) create several network diagrams - start with a high-level one to see what your topology looks like, and then break that down into individual layers or segments, complete with individual specifications including the device specs as well as the type of wire connection between devices.

From that, you'll be able to determine your throughput (which is the load that the worst device in your network can handle), and see if that matches your actual throughput (you'll need to implement logging or some sort of monitoring capability on all your routers to check this. I'd also recommend doing this more than once, and more than twenty times if you are able (maybe once a day throughout a month, or even a few months, if you can) - which will allow you to get a good average and reduce anomalies.

Originally Posted by Mohammed Seidu

Thank you very much for those ideas. I am currently working on changing direct pc printers to network printers. As for the creation of network diagrams, I am a novice in networking and would be glad if you can give me a link to any resource that might help. I am actually a programmer.
Once again thank you.

Originally Posted by sicarie

In the creation of a network diagram, the diagram is actually the last and most trivial part. It allows you to visualize and solidify that which you have researched, but the most important part is getting that information about each device and piece of hardware.

In general, you will need the hardware version, software version, average throughput, and advertised throughput (found on any device spec sheet available either online or from the vendor). This will vary based on load, the age of all that stuff, etc...

I would recommend starting with two tests - test the speed of your network internally, and the speed of it going to an external site. That will tell you if the speeds are different or not (roughly - once again, I'd recommend doing this more than once) and you will have a general path of focus. From there, you can profile your network devices and the cables connecting them, and then go to the individual servers or desktops as necessary. It may be you have a vary old core router, and that is where the slowdown is. Or it may be that you have two or three PC's that are greatly infected with malware and that is clogging up your network.

If you are looking for the visualization tool, Microsoft's Visio is the most commonly used tool for this.

Originally Posted by RevBooter

Hi,

Can you ping the printers?

I am assuming you are not using managed switches? e.g. cisco and just a 24 port freecom "switch"

Cheers!