How to put users into sub-networks

[el]

Hi all,
My working company now has 2 servers and 3 network switches, as:

1. (old server, call it SV1) MS Windows 2000 Small Business Server with:
1 x 100Mbps network card, connects to the Internet
1 x 100Mbps network card, no connection
1 x 1000Mbps network card connects to 1000Mbps unmanaged network switch (call it SW1)

2. (new server, call it SV2) MS Windows 2003 Standard Edition with:
1 x 1000Mbps network card connects to the same 1000Mbps unmanaged network switch (SW1)

3. all 3 network switches are now interlink together

Generally, we have 3 types of users:
1. Administration users
2. AutoCAD users
3. Computer modelling users

AutoCAD and computer modelling users are always complaining about the speed of the network. What I am thinking is to separate these 3 groups of users into 3 separate sub-networks. However, I don't know how to do it? Any suggestions is welcome.

Regards,
el

 

[Phillip Windell]

AutoCAD and computer modelling users are always complaining about the
speed > of the network. What I am thinking is to separate these 3 groups of
users into 3 > separate sub-networks. However, I don't know how to do it?
Any suggestions > is welcome.

Don't waste your time. Routers (what creates subnets) are to protect from
Broadcasts and nothing you have describes indicates you have a broadcast
problem. The Switches that you already have in place are already segmenting
the LAN into "logical circuits" which is what you are looking for.

Don't let your users be the ones that "troubleshoot" the network. "Slow"
can mean anything, and none of it would have to be "wire speed". You need
to examine the situation and see what is really slow and what isn't. There
is a big difference between a slow website, slow internet in general, a
slow responding server on the LAN, a slow responding LAN Application, a slow
workstion because it is packed full of spyware, and slow wire speed.

The fastest way to check wire speed is to do a file copy of a decent size
file from one machine to another. If it copies at an expected speed then the
wire speed is fine. However even it that is slow there can be other things
that cause that besides wire speed.

As far as AutoCAD, that is processor intensive and not network intensive.
If the user of the AutoCAD have their AutoCAD workstations packed full of
spyware that is hogging all the CPU it isn't going to work very well.

 

[Guest]

Are their workstations running 1000Mbps? If not upgrade their cards. Also
you can buy double headed NICs for the servers and "team" them together to
double your throughput. Then configure it for load balancing.