Re: Slow Oracle response from WAN

"Rob Trefz" <rob_trefz_at_pleasantco.com> wrote

> I'm expierencing a problem with users at my remote sites saving data
> to our database. When users save the application data to the database,
> it takes ~ 3.5 minutes for the data to be saved.
<snipped>

> 1: Has anyone seen this before? If so, how did you fix it?

Yes. Fixing it depends on what the actual problem is. This symptom can point to various network and client configuration problems.

> 2: Does anyone have any network tuning tips? I'm wondering if Oracle
> needs to be given a higher priority across the network

Nope, that should not be needed (higher priority). Besides, how do you go about making one TCP packet from application ABC more urgent than a TCP packet from application 123 (on the same machine)? Not possible.

I think we can say that the problem is one of two things. Either something wrong the physical network, or something wrong on the clients.

We can discard the backend server from the equation as you said that clients on the LAN do not exhibit any of the same problems.

Take the case of a client who is using an ODBC driver that is not correctly "tuned". Let's say that this driver works in TCP packet sizes of 128 bytes. Compare this to an ODBC driver (or client app) configured to make use of 1.4KB packet sizes. The throughput and performance between these two applications will be significant. And especially noticeable on a WAN. I've seen WANs die because of this, where the simple solution was to change the "rowsize" parameter in the ODBC driver.

What about backup/data transfer processes that may run across the WAN at certain times?

What about a misconfigured router or gateway? It can play havoc with network performance.

Or what about a router/gateway that is redlined by the amount of traffic it needs to handle? Or one of the network segments being overutilised?

In this case you can run a traceroute to get the network segments involved, and then individually running a "large" ping against each of these to determine the response time for that segment from the current location.

Better still is to install a network sniffer and getting a capable network support specialist in to troubleshoot the network.

Personally I think you are barking up the wrong tree judging from your posting's topic.. "Slow Oracle response from WAN". How can this be an Oracle response problem?

Oracle simply does not care if you are accessing it via WAN, LAN, ATM, LU6.3 or whatever.. the network handles the transfer of data between server and client and client and server. How effective the network deals with that, is up to the network. Not Oracle!

IMO you should get a network specialist to look at your LAN WAN configuration. Such a problem like this can be solved within 24h after running a sniffer, analysing the results and implementing a solution/correction.

--
Billy