Speed and Duplex settings

Incorrect Speed and Duplex settings can hurt performance.

I've set up a maintenance policy  to maintain the appropriate speeds on the Network Adapters. I've only found this problem on non-fibre networks.
There are a few machines network adapter settings with an "Auto" setting. The machines I've noticed are the 100Mb speed.
By changing the Speed & Duplex setting to 100 Mb full - the problem is solved.

Solution

1)  There is the immediate issue - which I solved by manually resetting.The danger of manually resetting , is that I might miss a machine , which is part of the chain.

2)   Plan to script script out some way of comparing the network adapter speed with the switch ports speeds. This becomes more complex when you realise that developing a catch-all for every type of network adapter is not straightforward.There are utilities available for Intech based adapters , but if you are using other manufactures network adapters - then some work needs to be done .

I've noticed this is happening because the standard install is from an unprocessed install image. Therefore in a narrow implementation window it is easy to overlook , as it's a configuration setting once the install has occured

The impact of not having the right speed is : 1 day test is taking about 3 days.
I've implemented a few tests across Desktops and Servers - switching back and forth from the different settings. With standardised scripts acceptance test takes about 30 minutes , but setting the inappropriate setting will take about 3 hrs.

The problem is that the network card is auto-sensing incorrectly, therefore a less than optimum speed , which is hurting the network performance . It is not obvious in every application but for very network intense applications .

Be aware - and check speed and duplex settings