OSX 10.3.9 and Win 2003 Server

albionuk · #1 July 18th, 2005, 03:45 AM

Well this is my first Mac forum, I’ve recently started an IT job with Mac’s and I’m having my first experience of a whole new world for me.

I have a quick question to ask any of you about OSX and Windows 2003 Serve and OSX file sharing. Currently the OSX Macs connect to the shares on an 2003 Server share by “afp://[IP Address]” and then mounting the shares they want.

This works well apart from there is a large lag when opening up folders, especially where there are lots of file types to assign different icons to.

Is there anyway to reduce the lag?

Many thanks,
Glyn

lancepr · #2 July 20th, 2005, 01:02 PM

This is a limitation to the new finder in OSX. I recently upgraded some clients from OS 9 boxes to OS X G5 and old OS 9 boxes are just fine, but the OS X boxes are really slow browsing network shares.

slooksterpsv · #3 July 20th, 2005, 01:04 PM

Try connecting via SMB://Ip_address - it works a lot faster than afp

pseudonym · #4 July 20th, 2005, 04:33 PM

12 Macs running 10.3.9 hooked to a Win 2003 server via Appletalk:

We used Cocktail to increase the packet size transmitted over the network.
Try Cocktail v.3.5.4 and adjust the network settings. The default Panther settings are too slow.

This eliminated the "slow scroll" problem in accessing full folders over the network.

HTH,
KK

albionuk · #5 July 25th, 2005, 07:52 AM

Cheers for all the replies. What settings do you recomend for the Network settings?

albionuk · #6 July 26th, 2005, 04:20 AM

I’ll explain a bit more about our network and the settings on our Macs.

The Network is entirely CAT6 cabled with switches to suit. We have OS9, OSX with XP on the same domain. The OS9 and the OSX Macs just connect to the shares on the domain controller and the XP machines log on to the domain and work from there.

The OS9’s are connecting to the server via AppleTalk and seem to be running at a suitable speed while navigating the network shares without a problem.

The OSX machines are connecting via AFP on the DC’s IP address and are experiencing a long lag while first accessing a network folder.

I’m not sure who or where but I was advised to set the packet size to “1485” instead of the default “1500” on the OSX machines but could not tell you why this is. Regardless it seems to make no difference to the speed of the navigation of the network share.

I heard once that it could be a solution for the OSX system to cache the icons/thumbnails of the share after mounting the share, although depending on the amount of data on the share this could take a long time.

Connecting on SMB does speed up the navigation but this causes loss of program file linking and file icons to disappear, so it is not a realistic solution.

albionuk · #7 September 23rd, 2005, 11:02 AM

I have had to use a 3rd party piece of software on the 2003 server but the results are excellent.

http://www.grouplogic.com/products/extreme/overview.cfm

I recommend downloading the evaluation and giving it a go.

Though we did have to fork out £1,500 but the whingeing from half the OSX users has stoped.