Confusing Route issue.

[BerkHolz, Steven]

XP Client.
DHCP address assigned address.
Default Gateway set to our corporate router.
Additional routes added for access to a customer's servers pointing at the router that connects to our customer.
Router for customer is on our internal LAN. (packets to them should not hit our corp. router)

We are set up this way because our corp. router would slow down customer data. (corp router is 100mb., customer router is 1Gb.
customer link is 1Gb fiber)

Set up as listed at the top, our traffic to our customer was slower than it should have been.
For testing, I put the customer router as the default gateway.
Data transfer times were cut in half.

My assumption that there were some IP references that were being called that we did not have routes entered for.

I ran NETMON in both configs and saw no differences.
There were only three IP addresses referenced (not including the broadcasts that were recorded).
Two at the customer and one for a fileserver on the same LAN. (needed by the app.)
Both customer IPs went directly to the customer router in both setups.

My assumption is that the routing is working properly in both configs, but that XP somehow slows the data when using routes other
than the default gateway.

Route Print ref:

Active Routes:

Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 172.16.0.254 172.16.2.42 25

127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 1

130.170.0.0 255.255.0.0 172.16.0.253 172.16.2.42 1

130.175.187.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.0.253 172.16.2.42 1

148.98.184.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.0.253 172.16.2.42 1

172.16.0.0 255.255.0.0 172.16.2.42 172.16.2.42 25

172.16.2.42 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 25

172.16.255.255 255.255.255.255 172.16.2.42 172.16.2.42 25

204.230.144.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.0.253 172.16.2.42 1

224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 172.16.2.42 172.16.2.42 25

255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 172.16.2.42 3 1

255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 172.16.2.42 172.16.2.42 1

Default Gateway: 172.16.0.254

===========================================================================

Persistent Routes:

None


172.16.0.254 = corp. router
172.16.0.253 = cust. router

Please advise if anyone knows why a static route would be any slower.



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[Ron Lowe]

Curious.

I think you need to do some testing to see what's taking the time.
Is it slow throughout the whole transfer, or is it possibly an initial delay
during name resolution?
Could it be that your PC is trying name resolution for the curtomer server
on a local DNS or WINS server and this is causing a problem?

Do the ping times to the customer site look reasonable?

Then, I'd want to test simple TCP/IP speed between the sites using say FTP
or HTTP, to take windows file sharing protocols ( SMB) out of the equation.

Incidentally, your route table shows routes to 4 customer subnets via the
router at 172.16.0.253

None of these routes are listed as Persistent Routes.
Do you run a batch file to do the 'Route Adds' every time the machine boots?
That's OK, but a bit clumsy where you could add the routes with the
Persistent flag.

 

[BerkHolz, Steven]

Ping times are very good. Reply from 130.170.X.X: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=250
We tried a simple speed test via tftp, but their firewall was not opened up.
I do not think it is a speed issue per se, because when the routing is changed, our times are compatible with their other vendors.

The other IP ranges are used very rarely. But the 2 servers on the 130.170 net are used by approx. 30 people all day long.
They are opening and saving CAD files from our customer.
There is no SMB going on.
The two address are for an Oracle Server and a File Server that is using its own ports.
The oracle is using TCP/1526 and the File server uses TCP/2006.

Currently, we are setting these routes via DHCP using option 249.

What really confuses me is that the NETMON capture looks so similar.
I was really expecting to see a wrong MAC address to indicate the wrong router or some odd IP address that we were not routing that
was hardcoded into the app.
I am really leaning towards a problem with the XP routing engine or logic.


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[BerkHolz, Steven]

Oh, also,
We have had these hosts in DNS. We have also added them to the hosts files as well, hoping to speed up resolution.

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[Ron Lowe]

It seems you have indeed isolated the issue to an XP routing issue.
I don't have the necessary infrastructure set up at the moment to test
multiple gateways off my local subnet.

The best workaround I can suggest is removing the static routes from all the
clients, and pointing them all at only your corporate router as the default
gateway. Then, create static routes on the corporate router to the other
subnets, referencing the customer router. Yes,this will cause 1 extra hop
to the customer subnet ( Client -> Corp. router -> Client router ).
( Or the reverse - point the DG to the Client router, and then create static
routes on it for your internal subnets. )

But I have a general principle that routes belong on routers, not client
systems.

 

[BerkHolz, Steven]

I agree that routes belong on routers.

We didn't want to pipe everything though our gateway because the customer connection is 1Gb. and our router is only 100Mb. (ours is
used only to access our firewall and other sites over t1. 100Mb is fine for that)
I tried to get the customer to allow us to use their router as our default gateway, but they wouldn't.

I think I will either have to get a layer 3 switch with Gb ports or look at computer based routing with Gb cards.


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