File Access and Win2000

[SuperD]

Does anyone have some good links or advice on where I could go to look up information on accessing files over our WAN.

We need to troubleshoot our Win2000 network. Remote locations have extremely long access times to get files via Windows Explorer from a centralized server at a remote location.

But FTP the same file - and it's extremely fast.

I need some brush up.

 

[calpha]

FTP Access will be faster than direct access. Where I used to work, we had a secret Wins Address that was public, and you could use that WINS to get to your machine. Then you could map a drive to your machine, or do whatever you wanted.....etc Remote Desktop. But, since this was VIA WINS in NT Security Contexts, it was EXTREMELY SLOW. Copying Pasting, Renaming Files, was slower than sh!t. But, I ran a test. I made an FTP SErver on my work machine, and used the WINS to connect to it. It was at least 5x faster. The reason is that once you log on to FTP, all security contexts are already complete. There's not wasted bandwidth going back and forth with authentication, as there is when you try and log on to the machine directly. Besides that, WINS is really an inefficient beast anyway. Sorry I didn't give you any linkys, but I wouldn't expect going through the WAN to be near as fast as FTPing. Unless of course, you;'re talking about a VPN,which I didn't test.

 

[Woodie]

As calpha said, it's due to the browsing and authentication chatter of the Windows networking stuff.

Assuming this is all private network (no Internet)...look through your DNS configuration, your WINS configuration (where are the WINS servers? Do you have many?), your "Master Browser" settings (should be set to manual, w/ a server as the "Browse Master") I assume you're all in a single W2K domain/forest?, What type of authentication are you using? (NTLM or Kerberos), also, what is the relationship of the two machines (same domain, different domains/same forest, seperate forests) and where are your W2K Domain Controllers and Global Catalog servers located?

</end brain dump>

g/l

--Woodie