PM drags down whole network speed while open

[pmagi]

Hi,

I have had a strange speed problem on my gigabit network for a very long time and just now found out the cause, it seems to be PM related!

I have one machine (Vista Ultimate 64bit) with all images on as a "file server", and if I transer files to/from that machine from another in the network I will get normal transfer rates of about 100mb/s on the gigabit network.

However, when PM 4 or 5 is open (not even working in PM, just open) on the file server, transfer to/from that and any other machine will be only around 10mb/s. To clearify, I am not copying file to a folder that is open in PM on the file server, not even the same drive, and I am not using PM on the other machine, just a normal drag&drop in explorer.

I have had this problem for 1-2 years and never found out the PM connection until now, having spent hours and hours reinstalling drivers, changing network cards, changing router etc, etc.

What on earth could PM be doing to slow network transfer speed on that machine? I have tried the same to another machine in the network, and on that machine having PM open does not ruin transfer speed!

Is PM adding some layer to the network drivers when open even if just browsing some other local folders?

Please, any ideas?

Rgds
Petter

[Kirk Baker]

I have had a strange speed problem on my gigabit network for a very long time and just now found out the cause, it seems to be PM related!

I have one machine (Vista Ultimate 64bit) with all images on as a "file server", and if I transer files to/from that machine from another in the network I will get normal transfer rates of about 100mb/s on the gigabit network.

However, when PM 4 or 5 is open (not even working in PM, just open) on the file server, transfer to/from that and any other machine will be only around 10mb/s. To clearify, I am not copying file to a folder that is open in PM on the file server, not even the same drive, and I am not using PM on the other machine, just a normal drag&drop in explorer.

I have had this problem for 1-2 years and never found out the PM connection until now, having spent hours and hours reinstalling drivers, changing network cards, changing router etc, etc.

What on earth could PM be doing to slow network transfer speed on that machine? I have tried the same to another machine in the network, and on that machine having PM open does not ruin transfer speed!

Is PM adding some layer to the network drivers when open even if just browsing some other local folders?

PM doesn't even know that a folder is a network folder you're when you're browsing one.  It certainly doesn't use any special drivers or add another protocol.  It just accesses files and directories the same way it accesses local files and directories.

Do you have some way to log network traffic on a per application/process basis?

Once PM gets the information it needs from the directory and the files have their requested thumbnails/previews generated, it should not be accessing anything, unless you switch out of PM and then back in again.  At that time it will rescan the browsed directory for new or removed files but that should not take long and certainly has an ending.

-Kirk

[pmagi]

Hi Kirk,

yes I realise this sound totally crazy, but I tested and its 100% sure. If PM is open the network access is superslow on that machine. And that is without even accessing any folder at all! Close PM and network speed is back up to normal.

Are you aware if there is a network tool to try and check this?

I am quite good with computers but cant even imagine what is going on here.....! Any wild hypothesis?

Rgds
PM

[pmagi]

Some kind of firewall exceptions set for PM that affects network access system wide when the application is running? But then I have tried everything like turning off the windows firwall and all antivirus sw.....and even changed brand of antivirus, uninstalling Kaspersky that I had first....

Something with sharing? I have most of the fileserver drives shared at the root level....

This is super strange.....

/PM

[Kirk Baker]

Petter,

Some kind of firewall exceptions set for PM that affects network access system wide when the application is running? But then I have tried everything like turning off the windows firwall and all antivirus sw.....and even changed brand of antivirus, uninstalling Kaspersky that I had first....

Something with sharing? I have most of the fileserver drives shared at the root level....

Try turning off the Navigator.  See if that makes any difference.

-Kirk

[Brandon]

Do you have some way to log network traffic on a per application/process basis?

If you right click on your windows taskbar and go to Task Manager then you should be able to locate this handy tool in the screen shot. Take a screen shot of your network activity when this is happening and reply.





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[pmagi]

Great, will try both and get back to you (probably friday)!

Guess you mean just close the Navigator pane in PM?

Rgds
Petter

[Kirk Baker]

Petter,

Guess you mean just close the Navigator pane in PM?

From the View menu, make sure 'Navigator' is unchecked.  Does the network speed improve?
Also, try the Favorites in the same manner.

-Kirk

[pmagi]

Hi Kirk,

this is what it looks like. First one is with PM open, no Navigator or Favorites, showing no thumbs.

Second is after I close PM and try again to transfer files oevr teh network to this machine.

Looks like PM sets network speed down from 1Gbit to 100mbit while its open....Wild guess: Are you opening some low level windows file access stuff thats based on old code and dont support Gigabit Networking (on some hardware)?

If I only look into normal Network Center it looks like speed is 1Gbit all the time, but this shows it really goes down. And transfer speeds goes from100Mb/s to 10Mb/s so seems about right.

Rgds
Petter


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[Kirk Baker]

Petter,

I know of no access modes in PM that can cause your hardware to change its signalling speed.  I don't even know if there are OS APIs that will do that anyway.  I think you're getting tripped up by the Task Manager's scaling of the graph depending on the current activity level of your network.  Notice that while PM is running the actual throughput is 93 MB a second, so the graph is scaled to 100 Mbit.  After you quit PM the throughput is almost 500 Mbit and would go off the scale of 100 Mbit so the Task Manager changes the scale to 1 GBit.

Do you have network items mapped as actual drive letters on your system?

-Kirk

[pmagi]

Ah, yes I think you are right about the scaling thing.

Yeah I do have a bunch of drives on this system that are mapped to drive letters on both this and the other machine, so M: drive is shared as resource M: in the network and then on the remote machine that drive is mapped as a local M: too.

On this machine I do not have networked drives on other machines mapped at all.

Rgds
PM

[Kirk Baker]

Petter,

Yeah I do have a bunch of drives on this system that are mapped to drive letters on both this and the other machine, so M: drive is shared as resource M: in the network and then on the remote machine that drive is mapped as a local M: too.

On this machine I do not have networked drives on other machines mapped at all.

So on this particular machine you have no network volumes mapped to drive letters?

Do you have this same issue if your run PM on the other systems that you have access to?

-Kirk

[pmagi]

Right, this problem machine is used as a "file server" so it has 6 drives that I access from the other machines, but it has no mapping of other machines drives to drive local drive letters.

I also tried copying files to another machine in the network, and there I did not have any slow-down while PM is running. Those two machines used for that test has no mapping of each others drives, I copied the files by direct network access.

Any suspicions yet? As I mentioned I have had this problem for a long time, but only now realised the PM connection, so on the problem machine/file server I have changed network card and drivers, disabled anitvirus sw, firewalls etc etc....

Rgds
PM

[pmagi]

Some further testing:

* Tried copying to a folder that is on C: which is not shared as a whole drive (as the others are) and is not mapped to drive letters on the other machines, only the "Public folder" is shared from C: - Result is the same. Slow while PM open, speeds up when PM closed.

* Tried again to turn off antivirus and firewall, but its still the same.

* Then tried to uninstall the antivirus, windows defender and firewall off. Still the same problem.

* Tried looking at "Process Explorer" while copying files to this machine. I can not see that PM is using a lot more processor cycles or I/O while file copying is going on, so it does not look like data is somehow passing through PM. I am however no expert at Process Explorer.

* Tried copying files to one other machine in the network. No difference if PM is open there.

Any ideas for further testing? Perhaps try to provoke this on another machine, but how?

I wonder if anyone else has seen this problem? It is extremelty annoying, making work really slow for everyone accessing the central files if I use PM at the same time....

Rgds
PM

[pmagi]

Tried to have a look at network access with TCPView, but saw nothing special I think....

Also tried to look at copying files locally, and that speed does not seems to be affected......

Everything looks like PM sets the networking speed down to 100mb/s at start, and then back up to 1Gb/s at exit......strange!

/PM