Windows – Optimize Windows file access over network

network-shareoptimizationwindows

At my company I frequently need to access shared files over a Windows network.
These files are located on the other side of the planet, so I guess the file share goes through some kind of VPN over Internet, but I don't control this and it is supposed to be "transparent" for me. However it is extremely slow. Displaying the content of a directory in the file explorer takes about 10s.

Even if over the Internet, I did not expect that retrieving a list of file names would be that long. Are there any settings to optimize this from my Windows XP workstation, or is it mostly related to the way the network is configured?

The only thing I have found so far is to cache all file names, while by default only short file names are cached (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/843418).

Best Answer

If you're running a pre-Windows 2008 server or XP client as you stated, then you're only getting SMB 1.0 which is a block-level protocol that is notoriously slow over a WAN.

Your options are:

  • Move server and client up to 2008 and Windows 7 to get to SMB 2.0.
  • Implement WAN acceleration as suggested, but it's a costly proposition.
  • Try tweaking your TCP receive window size, selective acknowledgement (SACK),and window scaling -- usually a registry hack unless you can find a tool to do it for you.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938205.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938200.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938205.aspx

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