Good news! I must say, I don't know that I would have even looked closely at SNP and "cleaning the chimney" in the first place though if I hadn't seen several threads here posted or answered by Bob Fronk. Big thanks to Bob and others for the pains they went through in finding the resolution in the first place!
I sure hope the vendors can get together and fix these remaining problems. It feels like such a waste having to turn off new features that could be beneficial. -Bonnie -----Original Message----- From: Jim McAtee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 1:29 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Broadcom NIC problems? Wow! I just had a chance to reboot the server after making these changes (I found that all three were enabled in the registry - I'm not sure why I thought TOE was disabled) and it's a night and day difference. Immensely faster. Thank you!! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Miller Bonnie L." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 1:21 PM Subject: RE: Broadcom NIC problems? This sounds a LOT like the strange issue we had with our 2950 running E2k7 (can't just wipe and install x32) where Outlook would "hiccup" and lose connections to the server. Server appeared hung, but once logged on, was fine and users could reconnect. Updated firmware, drivers, Windows, Exchange patches, etc, and could not find a source. On the verge of calling PSS, but tried the chimney stuff first, and voila, haven't seen the problem since. We've turned it off for now on all of our 2900s and 2950s, and have seen great improvements in several servers where we probably didn't realize there were issues. On ours, I'm importing a reg file with the following ------------- Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] "EnableTCPA"=dword:00000000 "EnableRSS"=dword:00000000 "EnableTCPChimney"=dword:00000000 ------------- And, I'm also setting RSS to disabled in the advanced properties of the Broadcom NIC (in device manager). A reboot after that and it's all off. Will probably try turning things back on one at a time when this issue seems to settle down more, but at this point, it still appears to be a problem for us on the latest drivers, etc. BTW--we have one 2900 server that was so bad we had to stuff an Intel NIC in the box after it continued to BSOD on Broadcom drivers and Dell had replaced all the hardware (we changed cables, ports, etc first). Has worked flawlessly since--hoping to try removing that NIC with the chimney off soon, but need to wait until mid-winter break when the kids are gone in case it doesn't work. Point being, it seems to rear its ugly head for us with the Broadcom NICs. YMMV -Bonnie -----Original Message----- From: Jim McAtee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 11:03 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Broadcom NIC problems? In the IP Chimney thread there was a link to an article that alluded to more general issues with Broadcom drivers in Win2k3. I'm seeing some issues with a Dell PE2950 that we recently put into service as a web server. I first set the sysetem up using Windows Server 2003 x64 and had serious network throughput problems. Even on the local network (100 Mbps switch) I was seeing no better than about 130 kbps throughput. This was (and still is) without the TOE enabled. I farked around with it, trying different drivers until I finally gave up and installed Win2k3 32-bit. Much better network speeds. But what I'm seeing is now is an occasional hiccup where a web page appears to take several seconds to load. This is actually a little reminiscent of the original problem, as it would appear that the network would experience varying speeds, with short periods of a couple seconds that were extremely slow. Looking at the page generation speeds, it's not the web or application server, as the pages take just a fraction of a second to generate. Everything points to continued networking problems. Web sites from other servers in the same web farm don't display this behavior, so it would seem to be something with the PE2950 and not the network itself. Anyone else seeing something similar? Suggestions for either a fix, or where to begin troubleshooting would be appreciated. ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
