Is there any way to speed up internal network browsing...


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It seems like in Windows 8 it takes a bit to find other PCs on my internal network compared to Windows 7. Wondering if there are changes I can make to make it a bit faster.

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what is a bit? 2 seconds, 20, 2 minutes?

How are you trying to find them? Are you talking about your network listing of computers, browse list? Or are you doing run \\computer name and that is delayed popping up?

what about if you just go to command line and ping host name of one of your computers - how long does that take to resolve? Now I use dns so mine is not a good example. But between the time you hit enter

C:\Windows\system32>ping storage <hit enter here>

How long until the First Line comes back?? Does it come back fully qualified like mine with a domain name on the end even though I only pinged hostname

Pinging STORAGE.local.lan [192.168.1.8] with 32 bytes of data:

Or doees it come back like this

Pinging STORAGE [192.168.1.8] with 32 bytes of data:

Or do you get some error, etc.. Roughly how long til you hit enter until that first line appears is it?? In my case its pretty much instant! If you can count off anything more than say 1 second than yeah something is not quite right.

I would guess that your not running local dns? Or maybe you are - does your router support that? If it did name resolution should be FAST!!! unless you got something wrong with your computers search suffix for domain, etc..

I would have to assume your broadcasting for names - this can take awhile, since it would be last on the list for how windows tries and resolves names. You could change the order.. Changing to b-node for h-node, etc. might shave off some time -- what does it say for node type if you do a ipconfig /all

:\Windows\system32>ipconfig /all

indows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : i5-w7

Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : local.lan

Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast

IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : local.lan

is netbios enabled?

NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

in the same ipconfig /all output?

You could setup host / lmhost file on each machine with the netbios names of your computers - this would be instant resolution of host names. You could run a wins server.. Do you have a linux box or windows server OS on your network?

So details of what you feel is a bit to find, and we can work out how to speed that up!

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So finally getting around to this as I'm sort of annoyed by it...

1) I'm referring to when I open Windows Explorer and click on network. It takes about a minute for other PCs on the network to show up

2) I can type in the hostname and get in quickly. Not really an issue but I'm still wondering why it would take so long

3) I have another PC that shows all PCs on the network including my Main one instantaneously

4) Both pcs show the same ping results

5) Node type is hybrid

The only real difference I can think of is that my Main PC is connected to a switch while the other PC is connected directly into the router. Could the switch be causing a delay?

EDIT - regardless of PC, it takes a 1 minute before I can access any shares on my server. It'll initially say that it's unable to access the network shares but then a minute later I can. Could it just be the switch? And if so is that typical behavior? I thought there would be no difference between being connected to a switch or to the router. If there isn't supposed to be a difference, it's a bad switch?

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Sorry don't mean to bump but I can't edit my last post...

So to elaborate on my setup...

Before I had an actiontec fios router, a switch and Asus RT66U router on my network. The latter has Tomato USB Shibby installed and I had it set up temporarily as a bridge. I plan to remove the actiontec router as I won't be using Fios' cable boxes and instead use my own tuner.

I decided to try and see what would happen if I replaced the Asus router with another switch I bought last week - it seems like everything is back to normal now.

Could it be a setting on the router that was causing network browsing to slow down?

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It seems like in Windows 8 it takes a bit to find other PCs on my internal network compared to Windows 7. Wondering if there are changes I can make to make it a bit faster.

I recently had an issue with network speeds on a brand new system I installed for someone (Win7 client, new router, Win7 file server). Internet speed was fine, but anything over the network was ridiculously slow. The remaining machines in the building (all XP and 1 Vista - don't judge, new client) were fine. What was the problem? Something with IPv6. Once I turned that off on the adapter, network speed was fine. Worth a shot, anyway.

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No its not the switch.

So is netbios enabled? Who is your master browser? When you click on network that is browse list, this is maintained by one of your computers or more on your network.

Are they all in the same workgroup? Are you using homegroups? What are these ping results, do they come back fully qualified? Are they less than 1ms - lan pings should be very very low!!

Use this tool to find out who your master browser is.. you prob everyone able to be the browser master and it prob switches back and forth when you take a machine on and off the network.

http://scottiestech....dows-workgroup/

So you say the browselist take awhile? From cmd line do just a net view, do they come up instant then? Or do you get an error, example

C:\Windows\system32&gt;net view
Server Name			Remark

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\I5-W7
\\STORAGE			  My storage server
The command completed successfully.

Now at this time of the day all the other boxes are off, etc.

edit:

"RT66U router on my network. The latter has Tomato USB Shibby installed and I had it set up temporarily as a bridge."

setup as a bridge?? What you sere just using its lan ports? Or were you bridging 2 networks? Can you layout your network please with a drawing? Can be some boxes in paint if you don't have anything better to use. http://www.gliffy.com/ is free network drawing tool you could use

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I was wrong about the switch from router to switch. Made no difference really

1) When I check ipconfig, Netbios shows up as enabled

2) My server shows up as the master browser

3) No homegroups. I removed all my PCs from my homegroup as I was having issues with security settings and what seemed like old user accounts that were from my WHS 2011 server before I moved over to Win 8

4) ping results less than a second

5) Net view - takes 30 seconds for the PCs to come up

Diagram attached. Top two devices are the switches. Bottom is the actiontec router

post-2767-0-54467600-1358003038.jpg

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"4) ping results less than a second"

That is not very good ;) do you mean less than 1 ms (millisecond)

Pinging STORAGE.local.lan [192.168.1.8] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.1.8: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

Reply from 192.168.1.8: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Reply from 192.168.1.8: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

64 bytes from storage.local.lan (192.168.1.8): icmp_req=2 ttl=128 time=0.382 ms

64 bytes from storage.local.lan (192.168.1.8): icmp_req=4 ttl=128 time=0.361 ms

"5) Net view - takes 30 seconds for the PCs to come up"

That is not right - that should be pretty much instant!!

So I would really suggest you fire up wireshark and see what is happening. So here you see my query and then a response back from the masterbrowser in like .0012 of a second. Now what I am curious is your having issues sending the query to the right place, is it delayed -- is it taking forever to setup the session so you can do the query?

post-14624-0-12187500-1358004417.png

I already had a session setup in this session but, let me kill that and then do another query.. So you see here my box starts the session using smbv2 and then uses smbv1 -- going to look into why its not sending just smb2.. I might have been tweaking with it when I was having some issues with auth to my popcorn hour that was running a really old version of samba.. Anyway -- so if you fire up wireshark and take a look at what is going we can see what takes so long

post-14624-0-18017000-1358004726.png

If you notice from the time I send first packet at 5.893 seconds into the trace to when I get my response is at 5.908 your talking 15 ms (milliseconds) So lets see what takes yours so long. Easiest way to see that is to watch what is being sent over the wire!!

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well looks like your using ipv6 there to me -- that could be slowing you down?? Those are link local address types, are you using ipv6??

you could disable ipv6 if your not using it.. Now I use ipv6 for testing, so I have mine setup to disable all the tunnel crap interfaces. I also setup mine to prefer ipv4 over ipv6

Here I would do this, from a cmd prompt elevated to admin. do this command

reg add hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\tcpip6\parameters /v DisabledComponents /t REG_DWORD /d 255

This will completely disable ipv6 except for loopback -- now for starters your ipconfig /all should be cleaner - more like this

C:\Windows\System32&gt;ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : i5-w7
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : local.lan
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : local.lan

Ethernet adapter Local:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 18-03-73-B1-0D-D3
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2601:d:xx:xx::666(Preferred)
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::e0cd:efb8:f50:7e7b%12(Preferred)
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.100(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 2601:d:xx:xx::1
									   192.168.1.253
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.253
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

C:\Windows\System32&gt;

With all the ipv6 gone - mine I use, so it needs to be there.. I use the following command

reg add hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\tcpip6\parameters /v DisabledComponents /t REG_DWORD /d 32

But I doubt you have any use for ipv6 - you stated your not using homegroups.. So I don't see what you could be using it for, unless you have a tunnel setup with hurricane, etc.

Lets disable it!! And see if that speeds up your stuff, I would do the same command on your master browser boxes - I would do it on all boxes on your network for that matter. If you not using a protocol, from just basic security standpoint of least privilege the protocol should not be enabled.

You can put it back to normal with just this simple command

reg delete hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\tcpip6\parameters\ /v DisabledComponents /f

That deletes the entry. So you have nothing to loose, and everything to gain and a much cleaner ipconfig /all to look at.

You can send me your capture if you would like me to take a look at it - PM it to me, etc. Btw I snipped out the global ipv6 address in my ipconfig /all output -- but yours is linklocal and like a private address in ipv4 since it starts with fe80.

after you do the commands you do have to reboot.

edit: also see your getting a login failure on your session creation. That sure is not going to speed up anything, so we could work out how your authing to these other boxes, and your master browser, etc. Send me your capture in PM and take a look, to be honest there shouldn't be anything in there to worry about from a privacy issue - you didn't log into any websites, etc. during the capture did you? So only thing in there should be local stuff.. You could filter to only local ips if you really worried.. But have worked in IT for 25+ years, I have no desire to see/know anything in that trace other than what I am looking for to fix the problem - that I can promise, and would not give up any of the info in there I might see that would be of privacy concern to the public net, etc.

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