Moodle in English: Server Network Connection Speed

Hi All,

I have spec'd and got a quote for a real meaty machine to host our moodle server : 2 quad core processors, 16Gb memory, raid 1 system disks and raid 5 database / data disks.

However I have just found out that the port on the DMZ only runs at 100Mb/s. This is not a problem for external access as the uplink is currently only at 10Mb/s. However our maximum concurrent users will be internally ( 350-400 max concurrent ).

Has anyone got any experiences on network connection speed limiting end user performance ?

If I were to put the server inside the school proper and then have another small server in the DMZ somehow sourcing through the DMZ to the real server would this solve the issue ?

Thanks

John Williams

Why do you need to DMZ the server? It seems to me that you could just open port 80 and forward a domain to it. If you use the DMZ feature there will be no firewall covering your server and you will have to utilized the software firewall that came with the operating system. You shouldn't need two servers. When I setup servers I have them accesible from the internal and external. and 100Mb/s shouldn't limit or slow down the connection with so few users. That is unless you are streaming a lot of high quality content. Feel free to contact me via email about this.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the reply.

We are forced to put our external server in a DMZ because our local authority ( we are a school ) requires it. They also run our firewalls and internet connection and so we are bound by their rules. However our DMZ is in fact between 2 firewalls - one at the local authority and one in our school - and so protection does not concern us too much.

We will have a lot of streaming audio / video planned but the real workload will be internal to the school - with a smaller number of concurrent users accessing externally i.e. students from home all at different times.

I am now thinking of an apache proxy redirect in the DMZ. Internally we would point directly to the internally housed mega server and so our streaming etc would be fine. Externally we would not suffer performance wise due to lower load.

Getting streaming going might be interesting though the proxy but I am sure someone else is doing it.

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

Hi Greg,

I work within a large schools/gov network on a moodle site we have set up for many classes of school aged children. I am supporting teachers and students and helping to manage the site, but I have no access to the server end. Our Moodle site began running intermittently slow late last year and has continued to do so. We operate within a VPN. I am frustrated at the time it's taken for the experts to resolve the issue, even though we have supplied a great deal of information from users experiencing problems to the techies. Examples of problems include:

- up til about Oct/Nov last year firefox was faster than IE on both home and vpn computers, now firefox is 2 to 3 minutes slower than IE at work, but still quicker from home via ADSL
- intermittent speed problems occur, it might take 5 seconds to open a page in moodle and then a minute later it might take 3 minutes to open the same page or go back and forth between pages

I am not talking about pages within moodle that have massive video or other files - just standard webpages or navigating back and forth.

I realise that you probably need more technical info, but you might have some suggestions that I can pass on to the support staff.

Cheers

Tom

> However I have just found out that the port on the DMZ only runs at 100Mb/s. This is not a problem for external access as the uplink is currently only at 10Mb/s. However our maximum concurrent users will be internally ( 350-400 max concurrent ).

> Has anyone got any experiences on network connection speed limiting end user performance ?

Since nobody reported from experience, let's look at it "on paper".

The question is, whether going for a Gbit network interface the server would deliver more than the current 100 Mbit/s.

There are two things you should look at:
1. Assuming the network interface delivers full Gbit/s traffic, follow the "supply line" to the many concurrent users carefully to check whether it is possible at all. If not, what is the maximum bandwidth at the bottleneck?

2. Is your server capable of delivering sustained 1 Gbit/s data, or whatever the max. from Q1, a) from RAM b) from the harddisk?

Hardware and performance

Server Network Connection Speed