Network Administration

My office building has a problem with the internet in that it is uber slow....
The ISP says everything is fine on their end so my assumption is that one of our tenants is sucking the bandwidth dry.

My question is how I would go about monitoring each individual suite (tenant) so that I can start kicking down doors and busting some heads. (I'm not actually going to kick down doors or bust heads)

I have looked at all the available options on the App Store and there are three (NetAdmin, iNet, NetUse Traffic Monitor) that seem like they would work but I am not tech-savvy to the degree that I need to be to make this decision (at least I don't think I am)... and I am definitely not at the level to be able to use something like WireShark.

I'm basically looking for some feedback on how maybe some of you guys with Macs operate a businesses Network and see usage throughout. If this means something packaged within OSx then I would love for a quick run-through on what is going on with something like WiFi Diagnostics and how that works.... it looks like Greek to me.

Some information:
We use TelePacific which says it is a VPN service.
Everything was working fine up until about two months ago.
I am not an IT guy.
About three or four different IT companies have come in and messed with the server... the last of which was about 5-6 months ago and it was working just fine after he messed with it.
We have a main server and then each client has a port in their office to which they can connect their own routers and create their own Wi-fi's.

Any information would be awesome... Tenants are threatening to leave if we don't resolve this issue in a timely fashion so time is of the essence.

Thanks to anyone who responds! Cheers.

Some reason this duplicated....

Merged threads - please do not crosspost.

I can't answer this question (at least yet) but you'll need to provide more details as to how this network is set up. What kind of hardware is being used? How is traffic directed and controlled?

Reply

Sorry about the cross-post...

Each individual tenant has their own router so I can't give you specifics on what make / model they have unless you need that information, cuz then I can work on getting it. We have a server room, how that works I am not sure... there are a ton of wires coming in and out of all kinds of ports. These, I assume, are the ones that are directly connected in each office as a physical port.... I can go into the server room and give you the specific names of each component if that is what you need. But for example, in our back office here we are using a D-Link router from the wall connection...

Is this enough information?

Having worked in a similar environment (US Government) it could be a hardware problem somewhere along the line. You may wind up having to hire an IT expert to troubleshoot the system. One of our forum Administrators is an IT engineer and expert so perhaps he will respond with advice on what you can do.

It's quite difficult to narrow this down online given the complexity that you've described. Perhaps it would be best to bring someone in.

We have a guy coming out tomorrow so hopefully he can pinpoint the data-hog but it would be sweet if after he's gone I could somehow track each suite... Are you saying that is rather difficult given the server complexity?
Have you guys used any of those apps that I listed in the original post?
Thanks for your responses thus far.

As a network engineer myself, i tend to find the best way to monitor traffic hogs is by using a netflow analyser at the edge of the network ie the router connected to the internet, but that would rely on the router supporting it. I doubt very much the D-Link router is going to support it, if anything it just can't handle the load that NAT is putting on it, i've seen it before on low end routers being pushed too hard and start dropping the outbound packets. But it'd be interesting to see what the IT guy finds, especially as everyone could be double natting with that dual router setup.

I know of a few hardware products that would let you monitor each IP individually but that would depend on budgeting and the complexity.

After phoning telepacific again this morning, they decided to send out an AT&T guy (Al) out to check on the circuits or something like that... he changed the board out and so far things are going ok... he said that one of our circuits (i guess we have two bonded ones at 1.5 mb each) was sending errors or not sending packets. So that is the deal right now... maybe it wasn't some data-hog in building.
Anyways, the IT guy never showed this morning (what a *******), he didn't even call until 30 mins after he supposed to be here to let me know he wouldn't be coming.
Anywho, thanks again all of youse for your input... hopefully AT&T fixed it and the internet won't be so terribhle.