How to determine network speed?

[Guest]

I'd like to know how to determine the internal and gateway network and
network access speed, and what factors that I should consider in improving
the speed. For example, in the morning when users start logging in and
connecting to the shares, everything seems to be very slow and then at lunch,
when everyone tries to access the internet, everything is really slow again.
Thank you for any suggestions!

 

[Smogthedog]

What about some information about the network setup - switches or hubs, cat5
or 10baseT, layers numbers etc etc
server specs client specs etc etc

 

[Guest]

- A broadband line out to the internet
- HP ProCurve Routing Switches 4000M across network
- AMP NetConnect CAT6 Systems
- Use public address for every single computer via 2 WinNT4 DHCP servers,
each for each subnet
- Dell PowerEdge 1800/Dual Xeon/2GB RAM/Gigabit card as AD, hosting 2000
users, their files and a database application that manages users records,
schedule, etc.
- Client machines are generally P4/2GHz/128MB RAM/10GB HD/10/100 card. All
running Windows 2000 Pro/XP Pro

I'm not sure if the network slowness is partially caused by the use of
public addresses on all computers and the line out is broadband instead of T1
or above.

Any help or suggestions so that I can improve the network speed would be
greatly appreciated.