Hi everyone,

We've just installed a Visual Foxpro product on a WINNT machine, running on a Novell network. The person using the server has really good response time - however anyone using the network (we've simply shared access to the tables to allow multi-user) has a problem with response time.

According to the customers network "Guru" (I think he wrote "War & Peace" too):

"the problems experienced by the product when run from a networked machine appear to be caused by the products' utilisation of the NBT protocol. NBT (NetBios over TCP/IP), is a fairly simple protocol, that propagates network broadcast packets when invoked. When a user connects to network share offered by the server, this opens
a NBT connection to the server. This NBT connection appears to be the limiting factor when a process is initiated in that server via the workstation. When monitoring the NBT connection to the server, the effect of initiating a Fueltrac process is an immediate increase of NBT traffic between the two machines to 100%. This suggests that the neither the server, or the workstation (client), are the limiting factor responsible for the massive increases in response time
from the server, rather that the NBT traffic is. To test this, the server and local workstation were monitored for processor activity and memory activity during the process of report generation, and neither machine showed signs of stress, however NBT traffic rose to 100% immediately. As a test NBT was disabled on the server (and workstation), and an attempt to generate a report was made. This attempt was unsuccessful. This suggests that the software itself dictates that the NBT protocol should be utilised. The server and workstation were capable of using alternative protocols, but none
were used.

In addition to this problem, the test also showed that the product creates and maintains a network connection to the server during report generation, and that this connection was subjected to a significant degree of stress during this period. This connection may well be unnecessary itself, and needs to be investigated and justified.

This poses problems for the network utilisation of this product, Without true network usability, this product loses worth. The product in its current form does not offer true functionality over a network, due to the unnecessary network connections held open for network clients, and also for the heavy use of those connections. These issues need to be raised, and resolved, with the products'
vendors before 'signing off' on the product."

My questions are -

(a) what the hell does this guy mean (in simple terms)
(b) can we improved response times by doing something to FVP??/

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I know basically nothing about network stuff...

Regards

Chris Kable
FuelTrac