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Experiencing delay opening files

Retired Expert - Jack _Keane, Ph. D. EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Retired Expert - Jack _Keane, Ph. D.

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QUESTION POSED ON: 02 June 2003
I am experiencing a problem with my VPN connection. We are a small company, about 7 computers on our LAN and 10 remote clients. I am using Windows 2000 Server as a VPN host with PPTP. We mainly use the VPN for file sharing. My users are complaining that the connection is too slow, upwards of 5 minutes to open a small word document.

Could you please give me insight to what might be the reason why the connections are so slow. I was thinking of upgrading to a full T1 and creating a router-to-router VPN tunnel using IPsec. Thanks in advance for your help.


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EXPERT RESPONSE
It's difficult to guess where the problem is just from the information above, but I would agree that 5 minutes to open a file seems excessive. Here are some things to check:

  • Use ping to determine round-trip latencies with and without the secure connection. If latencies are routinely over 200mSec, you would expect performance degradation.

  • Use ping to measure packet lossage. Packet loss at 5% or more can have a significant effect on TCP-based protocols, like Windows file transfers.

  • If you are using L2TP/PPTP and IPsec, Windows often has problems when multiple adapters are running Windows networking protocols. You might try unbinding Windows Networking from all but the L2TP adapter and see if the performance improves.


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