Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ns-mx!shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu!jrblack
From: jrblack@shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu (James Roger Black)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Suppressing resource searches
Message-ID: <1613@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 90 20:01:04 GMT
Sender: news@ns-mx.uiowa.edu
Reply-To: jrblack@shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu (James Roger Black)
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Lines: 34

We are using a Novell server with Dayna VAPs to provide file service for our
AppleTalk network.  Most of our Macs are Pluses, with a smattering of IIs and
SEs.  We have tried connecting the Macs directly to the server through 
LocalTalk, and indirectly over Ethernet through GatorBoxes.  We are having 
serious performance problems with the server either way.

A large part of our problem seems to be related to the way the Mac searches
for resources when opening a DeskTop window.  For example, if a user has the
Novell server mounted and opens the local System Folder, it appears that the
Mac goes out and scans the server DeskTop in an effort to find the resource
information it needs to display the appropriate icon or filetype information.
It does this every time a new window is opened, even if it just did it half a
second ago for a different window.  As you can imagine, this creates a lot of
traffic if there are thirty or forty users opening and closing windows all the
time.

We have seen server CPU utilization hit 97% repeatedly, while the same server
reports almost zero disk utilization.  In other words, the server has already
cached all the information it needs to provide, and is spending almost all its
time sending the same DeskTop information over and over again to the Macs, who
use the info once, throw it away, and then ask for it again.  This
doesn't seem 
real efficient, to say the least.

We are relative novices to AppleTalk, so it is quite possible we are missing
something obvious or misunderstanding what is going on.  If anybody can clarify
what's going on here--or, better, if anybody can tell us how to fix it--we 
would be very grateful.

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 Roger Black                                   jrblack@shemtaia.weeg.uiowa.edu

 Disclaimer:                My employer doesn't even know I have any opinions.
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