Our application relies on network performance. Ensuring your network is running at top speed is critical.

There are several ways to optimize network performance:

  • Examine utilization - Watch peak periods. Running a large report at the busiest time of the day can cause network congestion.  Consider running reports at the end of the day or before the business opens to ensure there's less traffic on the network.
  • Pay attention to applications - Applications can automatically download updates thereby eating up the network bandwidth. 
  • Know your bandwidth needs - A switch or 'smart' hub will actively look at the traffic it receives and based on the destination address it will direct that traffic only to the port needed. If a failing network port or network card can broadcast to the entire network taking up available bandwidth causing slow performance.
  • Security - Spyware or malware can slow your computer to a halt. Run virus software or anti-spyware solutions to help eliminate them.
  • Antivirus - Schedule your antivirus software to scan your computer after business hours. A full system scan will make a brand new system run like an old computer. 
    • Consider Allowing or not having your virus program scan SystemFive.exe or WindwardPOS.exe programs if affecting daily performance.
  • Computer configuration - Check to ensure the computer is configured to similar workstations that don't have performance issues. Even though computers can have the same specifications, a single setting changed by mistake can cause serious consequences.

Below is a troubleshooting example:

Scenario: The computer is brand new, only has System Five and Pervasive installed but takes 3-4 minutes to login and another 5-10 minutes to run a simple report.

Cause:  The computer was not auto-detecting the connection speed to the switch.

  • The Local Area Connection Status displays a speed of 10Mbps
  • This was confirmed by going into the task manager and checking the networking tab
  • Running a speed test gave ping results of 638ms, 0.69 Mbps download and upload of 0.04 Mbps
  • To fix the problem, check the Local Area Connection properties
    • Within the Local Area Connection Properties, click on the configure button to configure the network adapter
    • On the network adapter properties, change the value for Speed and Duplex and WOL Speed from 10Mb to 100 Mbps Full
    • The computer will try to obtain another IP address from the server and will give a 100Mbps connection to the network instead of 10Mbps
    • This can be confirmed by going to the task manager and checking the networking tab
  • Running a speed test after the configuration gives a better result.  The download speed almost doubled to 1.35 Mbps and upload speed increased as well to 0.15 Mbps. For ping, the lower the better as higher ping means congestion.

If doing the steps above, gives an IP address that starts with 169.x.x.x, replace the cable and make sure it supports speed up to 100Mbps. May also require the help of a System Administrator or IT Personnel.