Microsoft Agent Server (agentsvr.exe)

[Tom Taylor]

I've been troubleshooting some bandwidth problems going
accross my T1 for about 2 weeks and have discovered that
the agentsvr.exe is causing the problem. With my set up
and what I have research on the Microsoft Agent Server,
this seems very odd. I have a couple terminal servers in
the corperate site and use thin clients on the remote
sites. This should use much lower bandwidth given it is
sending key strokes and display. I have discovered that
wehn I have high spikes on my routers ( over 50 - 60%
utilization) the terminal server is sending thousands of
packets to the a few individual thin client devices and
wehn I check on the server the agentsvr.exe is present in
the task manager. When I terminate this process the
bandwidth utilization drops down to normal and stablizes.

Why would this efect bandwith between the server and the
thin client? How do I disable this service?

Any help woudl be appreciated.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

How are you using the Agent in your TS sessions?

While terminal services is a low bandwidth protocol, it
can use lots of bandwidth if it needs to. If your users
are looking at lots of bitmaps, then those bitmaps need to
all be sent over the wire, which can cause high bandwidth
usage and network spikes. This is why many companies
disable IE through TS connections, since most webpages
have tons of graphics on them.

-M

 

[tom t aylor]

IE is disabled both on the thin client connection setup
anad also blocked from the internet throught firewall
restrictions.

It appears tha the agent is running due to the Office
Assistant. i have plans to remove the feature from
outlook this weekend to stop othe service from runninng.
I'm still questioning why this service on terminal
sessions would cause such high bandwidth spikes.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

On the weekend, when no one is working, can you bring up a
session and see exactly what is happening on the client
during these large bandwidth spikes? It would be nice if
this was reproducible.

-M