Why is file and folder browsing slow across VPN? 1

[cchipman]

We have a site to site IPSEC tunnel set up between our two offices (DSL on both sides), and while the bandwidth is great when moving large files etc, browsing a file share of a box on the other side of the tunnel is SLOW, like 1 second between clicks.

Does anyone have a primer or an explanation why? We're attempting to remedy situation.

 

[baddos]

Generally NetBIOS browsing would be slow across a VPN tunnel, because of many reasons.

Mostly:

Low bandwidth (RPC calls are pretty fat)
High latency (many hops from source to destination plust IPSEC overhead)
Not using DNS or WINS properly

Try using \\IPOFCOMPUTER\SHARENAME instead and see if it's faster.

 

[cchipman]

Not substantially. Any suggestions to speed up communication? we can have the users use FTP services I think, but that will require a lot of training.

 

[baddos]

Well... It's NetBIOS RPC... With that file transfer method, it will be a fat for browsing, but fast for file transfer.

What would be best is to use some form of web based file upload/download system, or go ftp. The thing about NetBIOS is that it sends more than just the computername and share, but SID information, disk space usage, descriptions, etc. It's pretty bloated for over a slow link, but when it transfers files it does it with minimal overhead.