Hey multi-casting guru's, got a bit of a struggle I need some help working out...
I have a Dell server connected to a Dell Powerconnect 2848 switch. From this it bridges to another Dell Powerconnect2848 switch, which distributes connectivity to a couple small computer labs. I have been troubleshooting slow network connectivity, and I was thinking it was layer 1 related, but I just connected 3 computers to the switch with <10 ft Cat6 lines, and its still pushing at 65 MB a MINUTE!. This is a real problem for imaging during the school year, as It can take 14 hours to push a new image to a lab.
I am pushing multicast.
Network topology is
Server (2xGbE) -> Powerconnect2848 (Gbe, managed, 48prt) -> Powerconnect2848 -> computer labs (x2 22 machines ea, Gbe)
I don't think that the bottleneck is my switch "trunk", even though that its only one connection... The previous guy has done some mucking in the switch config, and I have been looking into the multicast settings in the switch. Bridge Multicast Filtering, and IGMP Snooping are disabled by default and he had them enabled... I disabled them to avoid needless Switch CPU processing, since when I push, only the lab that I am pushing is on downstream.
I dont use VLANs at this point, as our network is relatively small.
STP IS enabled on each of the switches... I have linked our slow logon time to this and have enabled "Fast Link" for the ports that will certainly only go to hosts...
Am I on the right trail? Do I need to trunk the two routers? My computers are handshaking at 1Gbps... I should be able to get 100 MB per SECOND theoretically. pushing at 60MB a minute is way too slow. The university I worked at, we would see numbers between 1200MB/min and 2500MB/min, which would make my life swell.
Any Ideas??
Thanks in advance!