VPN RAS Server Adapter link speed?

[RobertB]

I am connecting from a W2K machine to a XP machine over
the Internet via VPN. I then use NetMeeting to work on the
XP machine. All of that works ok, but the screen refresh
speed is horrible. I looked in Task Manager on the XP
machine under the Networking tab, and it shows the RAS
Server Adapter (dial-up) is a 28.8k connection!

My W2K machine has cable Internet and the XP machine has
DSL. Both connect to the Internet via LAN. Neither machine
has a dialup connection selected in the VPN connection
properties.

Where is this adapter speed setting at and how do I change
it? I should have a fast, great connection with fast
response times in NetMeeting.

I've searched the Microsoft Knowledge Base under XP for
RAS Server but can not find any information.

Thanks for any input!

 

[David Jones [MSFT]]

Hi,

Where is this adapter speed setting at and how do I change
it? I should have a fast, great connection with fast
response times in NetMeeting.

The 28k is an arbitrary number. The OS doesn't have the ability to figure
out what the actual bandwidth of a VPN connection is (it depends on the
downlink and uplink speeds on each end, conditions on the Internet between
the two machines, etc, and is constantly changing). In order to show you
the information available on the Networking tab of Task Manager (you can add
various columns of data), RAS has to pick some number to display for the
link speed, and so it displays 28k.
The actual speed will be as fast as possible.
As to your actual problem, I don't have an answer off the top of my head.
After you connect the VPN, try transferring some large files between the two
machines. The speed you get transferring large files should be just
slightly lower than the upload speed of the machine you're transferring
from. On a typical DSL or cable connection, that will be either 128kbps or
256kbps.

If Netmeeting has options for lower-speed connections, like dial-up, see if
changing to those options helps at all.

David Jones

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Aside from the other issues David Jones has covered, is there a reason why
you prefer to use NetMeeting for this interaction?

It is likely that Remote Desktop would give you better performance over the
same link.

 

[C E Designers, Road Division]

If 28K is an arbitrary number, then shouldn't the network utilization graph
potentially show usage higher than 100 percent?

On my server, the 100Mbps ethernet card over which the VPN connection
travels shows utilization of approximately half a percent while transferring
large files to the client. The client has 2Mbps download while the server
has approx 625 kbps upload, so doing the numbers (.005 * 100Mbps ~= 500
kbps) makes it seems the full broadband capacity *is* being used, as you
suggest. Looking a bit further, it seems the RAS link utilization is
calculated roughly based upon the actual available upstream bandwidth. At
the same time the ethernet card shows .5 percent, the RAS link shows roughly
65 percent usage. Seems it rounds up from 625 to 768. If it can calculate
the percentage correctly, it is doing something to calculate the total
available bandwidth as well. So I've answered my own question, but here's
another - since it is obviously determining the total available bandwidth to
calculate a percentage, why not show that instead of 28kbps to avoid
confusion?

Oh well. At least I know no that it is working properly.

Thanks for the info,
Eric