Testing network speeds manually

[theguywhoroutes]

hello ltt,

 

I provide support for a few primary schools but would like to hear from others on manual testing the network.

 

What is a more reliable way that you personally think would test a network in a real scenario? I shall be conducting my normal test on a specific site in a few days but would like to come back with more than usual information to present to my boss. While testing, students and teachers will be using the network but then I will be able to test it later that day with not much traffic. The main issue is that we are implementing Office 365 education where the students can be assigned homework and other tasks which can be completed online but also be able to be accessed anywhere else (without sending emails), this is all setup. We have observed previously with multiple classes that the internal side works perfectly with sharing resources, logging in etc... but using things like OneNote that requires students to login when starting the application seems to be a bit slow.

 

The problem that I have discussed with my boss is that their connection is around 9-10Mbps although this isn't much (since it is a primary school and not a secondary)... It seems that we'll only experience a 30 user class logging into the office 365 portal and not much else (such as streaming or other websites). We have addressed this to the school and it looks promising that they are looking at 100+Mbps lines. Although I personally think 10Mbps is slow, it should at least withstand at least 15 users that are just logging in... (Which it seems to just kill itself, sometimes only allowing 10 users before no one else can log in)

 

So, to gather information to present to the school... They want us to show that we are 100% certain it isn't the internal network (which we have tested and tested while in the real production environment) and it seems to be working exactly as expected. What would you present around a table of teachers and staff that need to be presented with short/quick/catchy data that will make the light bulb turn on? haha!

 

It seems that the helpdesk have reported quite a bit of packet loss, we have our DNS pointed to theirs (school needs to point to council, something like that.... We IT people are not allowed much information if we are a private support company)... Our guess is that this issue really happens upon websites, which could be something to do with so many DNS requests etc... although I've told them to be serious because 30+ computers requesting DNS isn't much now is it...???

 

 

Sounds like I want others to do my job for me ey? haha. No of course not, just a bit more background information if others want to dive deeper into suggesting options for testing network speeds etc....

[zMeul]

I'd look at the router

it may be a case where the router buckles under the number of opened and half opened connections

[LATINO WATER BOTTEL]

is someone on the network being DDOS maybe? I am a newbie but from what I read that maybe a possibility.

[Lurick]

Sounds like they have a really old firewall and/or router that cannot handle a bunch of connections per second, or has a mis-configuration to rate-limit the number of connections per second and instead of being in the hundreds it was typoed and is like 10 or something.

[theguywhoroutes]

11 minutes ago, LATINO WATER BOTTEL said:

is someone on the network being DDOS maybe? I am a newbie but from what I read that maybe a possibility.

Not getting any unusual traffic, all seems wrong when going outbound then returning... 

[theguywhoroutes]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Sounds like they have a really old firewall and/or router that cannot handle a bunch of connections per second, or has a mis-configuration to rate-limit the number of connections per second and instead of being in the hundreds it was typoed and is like 10 or something.

I'll see if I can access it, although I high doubt because they are quite strict to 'who' touches their equipment (everything else, switches etc.. are ours).. I don't blame them with the kind of people out there! haha

[LATINO WATER BOTTEL]

5 minutes ago, theguywhoroutes said:

Not getting any unusual traffic, all seems wrong when going outbound then returning... 

okay I don't know then sorry.

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, theguywhoroutes said:

I'll see if I can access it, although I high doubt because they are quite strict to 'who' touches their equipment (everything else, switches etc.. are ours).. I don't blame them with the kind of people out there! haha

Yah, if you can't access it at least see if you can get a model or something and maybe we can figure out something from that.

[theguywhoroutes]

It seems the other IT guys have installed an 887.... No one even mentioned it to us so looks like we can't do much because we won't be able to take a look at their equipment...

 

I have performed a tracert since some odd behaviour is happening that we can't ping DNS or IP to common places like google's DNS, bbc.co.uk etc... (although this was fine on saturday)....

 

Student and admin network have this same issue and seems to stop around 5th hop which is still in our 10.x.x.x network (so must be something wrong on their end)... I'll post back when it gets sorted

 

Many thanks for all help

[Lurick]

8 minutes ago, theguywhoroutes said:

It seems the other IT guys have installed an 887.... No one even mentioned it to us so looks like we can't do much because we won't be able to take a look at their equipment...

 

I have performed a tracert since some odd behaviour is happening that we can't ping DNS or IP to common places like google's DNS, bbc.co.uk etc... (although this was fine on saturday)....

 

Student and admin network have this same issue and seems to stop around 5th hop which is still in our 10.x.x.x network (so must be something wrong on their end)... I'll post back when it gets sorted

 

Many thanks for all help

Yikes, are you saying they have a Cisco 887 as their headend WAN router? If so, that's a horrific decision by whoever made it, lol. It's rated for WAN circuit speed of ~9Mbps and is something more suited for a SOHO situation than a school's PE router.

[theguywhoroutes]

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Yikes, are you saying they have a Cisco 887 as their headend WAN router? If so, that's a horrific decision by whoever made it, lol. It's rated for WAN circuit speed of ~9Mbps and is something more suited for a SOHO situation than a school's PE router.

Whoooops, maybe the IT found it in a skip and thought "We don't have to spend any money!!! yay"... haha

 

I'll look into it more and now I should be able to get the keys to the cabinet to see which ports are plugged into which the old style way... haha

[Lurick]

Just now, theguywhoroutes said:

Whoooops, maybe the IT found it in a skip and thought "We don't have to spend any money!!! yay"... haha

 

I'll look into it more and now I should be able to get the keys to the cabinet to see which ports are plugged into which the old style way... haha

Yah, gotta pinch every penny, lol.

[brwainer]

In terms of testing the internal network and proving that it isn't the issue, you should be looking at something like iperf, or Mikrotik's BTest (AFAIK its just a GUI implementation of iperf, but I could be wrong). You would be testing between two computers, so you might have one connected to the router directly and another in the lab. If possible you can also make a test with one of the computers on the other side of the WAN link, or in another subnet which would cause the router to have to route traffic between subnets.

 

Also, a better tool than tracert is MTR, which is like tracert over time. It can help you spot which hops are regularly dropping packets or introducing latency. The program I use is called "WinMTR". Also remember that some devices are configured to not respond to ICMP echo requests.