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Date:         Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:32:38 -0500
              <CDROMLAN@IDBSU.BITNET>
From:         FB23@VAXB.ACS.UNT.EDU
Subject:      Re: need to improve LAN performance

Allison Ounanian of Babson College writes:

>I have entirely lost my patience with our LAN .., Novell 3.11, DOS 5.0,
CBIS fileserver, 7 IBM-compatible 386's.  We run a couple SP products plus
Compact SEC, and UMI's ABI & Newspaper Abstracts.  ... Compact SEC won't
download to the A: drive, or stations hang in the middle of use of the
products and we reboot, or we get intermittent error messages of all kinds.
... My mission: find reliable software and JUNK [this system].


Allison, we run Novell 3.11, have 16 dedicated public access LAN PCs, and allow
access from any of 120+ library administrative PCs and 1500+ other PCs campus-
wide.  We use CBIS CD-Server/CD-Connection for CD-ROM networking and offer
products from SP (ERIC/PsycLit/AV-Online/MathSci/OCLC Music Library), UMI
(ABI-Inform/Periodical Abstracts/Newspaper Abstracts/Wall St. Journal/New York
Times/Dissertation Abstracts/etc.) as well as a number of other products from
Wilson, Standard & Poor's, etc.

You need to separate various aspects of the problem out to come up with the
best solution, either with what you have or with something else:

1.  Novell 3.11 is extremely stable, very robust and has managed to gather
    almost 70% of the network market.  It probably is not the culprit in
    your problems.  However, you might want to check several things:  be
    sure that you are using the latest versions of the network drivers
    (IPX, NETX/EMSNETX/XMSNETX) on all of your workstations, check to see
    if any appropriate patches to your revision of NetWare are available
    (problems are routinely found and fixed and revised versions of
    network utilities are made available by Novell).

2.  DOS 5.0 (no jokes here folks) is actually a reliable product and
    should not be causing any particular problems.  Be sure that you
    have configured your workstations to make the maximum amount of
    conventional memory available since most CD-ROM search programs
    are real memory hogs.

3.  CBIS CD-ROM Networking System - This is a good place to look at for
    some of your problems.  Check your hardware out first to be sure
    that you are configured properly.  Your CD-Server should have a
    powerful, fast processor, preferably a fast 80386 or a '486, you
    should have at least 4 Meg of RAM (preferably 8).  CBIS has
    advised me that if you are using their 8 bit SCSI adapters, you
    should be using a network card which does not have built in
    buffer memory (such as the Novell NE2000).  It goes without saying
    that you should be using a 16-bit network card.

    On the software side, be sure that you are using version 2.20 of
    the CBIS software.  If so, also be advised that you will need to
    make as much conventional memory available as possible to allow
    optimal performance.  We use DOS 5.0 at the CD-Server and also
    use Quarterdeck's QEMM386 to make as much room in CONVENTIONAL
    memory as possible.  THE INFORMATION IN THIS PARAGRAPH IS
    EXTREMELY IMPORTANT SINCE THE LACK OF CONVENTIONAL MEMORY CAN
    CAUSE THE CD-SERVER TO RUN OUT OF MEMORY WHILE THE MACHINE IS
    IN OPERATION CAUSING MANY OF THE INTERMITTENT PROBLEMS THAT YOU
    MENTIONED.

    Also, be sure that the version of IPX.COM at the CD-Server is
    the latest available.

4.  Some of the problems that you described may also be caused by
    configuration and setup errors within the various applications
    such as Silver Platter's SPIRS, etc.  Some necessary configuration
    information for these products can be hard to find (or may be
    missing) from manuals.  After checking out other aspects of the
    system, I would call the respective companies' technical support
    departments and chat with them.  If this fails, you may want to
    contact CBIS.  While they don't take responsibility for other
    vendors' problems, they do try to help.

    Concerning some of these products:  Silver Platter products should
    provide you with the best performance (they do for us).  CBIS
    OEMs hardware for SP and SP's software appears optimized for CBIS'
    equipment.  Finding certain important configuration settings (set
    using the file DBPAR, as I recall from my faulty memory) can be
    difficult in the SP documentation.  A call to TechSupport can
    be very enlightening in helping you to solve pesky problems.

    UMI makes some fantastic databases and an attractive search program
    (no snickers, audience), but we have had the majority of our problems
    with their products.  They are also among our most popular products.
    They are easy to set up and run, but they seem to exacerbate the
    problems with conventional memory shortage in the CBIS CD-Server.  To
    solve this problem, with the benefit of radically improved performance,
    we moved ABI/Inform to a hard disk on the Novell server (just do a
    DOS COPY of the files from a CD-drive to a hard disk partition--660Mb--
    and use the CDROM as a backup copy of the data).

Other miscellaneous things to look for, be sure that you have sufficient
FILES set in your workstation CONFIG.SYS files.  Be sure that you have
spill files directed to areas where they won't conflict with those of
other users (not a problem with UMI or SP), flag your search software
files properly (Shareable, Read-Only), and be sure that you have users
exiting the CD system gracefully (large numbers of abnormal disconnects
cause problems on the CD-Servers).

Someone that you may want to talk to at CBIS is Chris Hill (404)446-1332.
He has helped us many a time with problems on our own system.  Also, CBIS
users do have a sort of informal user group.  If you would like a member
list, providing a way of contacting other users that may have experienced
problems similar to yours, let me know and I will forward you a copy.  At any
rate, if you are unhappy with the system or performance of its parts,
complain to those responsible.  These people need the input.

Oh yes, what about performance on our system?  We get very heavy usage
during the day.  We have to reboot our servers periodically during the week.
The system is much less stable than I would like.  However, we are providing
consistent access to a very large number of databases to a large group of
people.  System performance improved somewhat when we recently upgraded one
CD-Server to an 80486/33 motherboard with 16Mb of RAM.  Upgrading from 8-bit
to 16-bit SCSI cards also helped.  Moving ABI/Inform to the fileserver hard
disk helped to make the CD-Server which formerly housed that database much
more stable.  However, in the end, it will be up to CBIS to improve performance,
and possibly up to UMI to ensure that their software will work well with
systems such as CBIS.

If you have any other questions concerning our experience or want clarification
of any of the points made above, feel free to contact me.

Arne J. Almquist
Assistant to the Director of Libraries for
Networking and Microcomputer Resources
University of N. Texas--Libraries
P.O. Box 5188
Denton, TX  76203-0188

Ph. 817/565-3278
Bitnet: FB23@UNTVAX