Network Troubleshooting

The Client: Connexions Derbyshire

The Problem: An application acquired two years previously was continuing to run extremely poorly, meaning that services were unavailable to clients. Users unable to access the application as required. The IT team unable to dedicate enough internal resource/expertise to diagnose the issues.

The Requirement: An application Speed Test to ascertain where the issues were within the infrastructure

The Solution: A significant number of Connexions employees had complained about the response times of an externally hosted application. Users appeared to suffer from sporadic response times, with the application seemingly hanging for periods of time. As a consequence, Nettitude was asked to carry out detailed analysis on the application, to identify whether latency was being introduced by the server, the network or the client.

Nettitude ran a series of tests between a dummy machine and the Server. It became apparent early on within the tests that it was possible to reproduce latency every time the tester selected a specific environmental variable. Nettitude debugged the traffic flows, and could see that the client was “hanging” when certain conditions were met. After Nettitude identified that the latency was being introduced by the client, a series of tests were conducted to try and ascertain why the machine was hanging. After carrying out a series of tests, it was possible to identify that the machine only hung when the operator was logged on as a local user. If the operator logged on to the same machine, with the same hardware and ran the same operations, but with local Administrator rights on the machine, the application functioned perfectly without error. As soon as the user logged off and logged on again, as a local user, without local Administration rights, the applications hung again.

 Nettitude’s LAN PD skills were able to assist Derbyshire Connexions in identifying where the latency was being generated in their Application. As a consequence they were able to go back to their software developers, and within a short period of time were able to ensure the application worked correctly for all users.

About Connexions: Derbyshire Connexions is an information, advice and support service for all 13 - to 19-year-olds, and for people up to 25 who have learning difficulties or disabilities (or both). Its aim is to raise the aspirations and achievement of young people – to encourage more young people to stay in learning and tackle the barriers that prevent some young people from achieving their full potential. Connexions is available in all parts of the country and it is delivered, in regions by local partnerships – this means a number of organisations who provide support services for young people all working very closely together, in an organised way, to give the right kind of help when it is needed.