Tip 32: Are My Servers Offloading?

This tip is for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 when running on Windows 2003 SP1 w/Scalable Networking Pack and versions of Windows since 2003 SP2.

There can be a lot of network traffic on a SharePoint server; incoming HTTP requests, incoming and outgoing SQL data and all of the rest of traffic that other applications may create. The networking updates can help with networking performance in these situations. That is, when the network adapter and driver support the updated networking features. If the network card or driver does not support or is having issues you may see errors on the server like; “General Network error”, “Communication link failure” and “A transport-level error has occurred” for more information check; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945977.

To check whether or not a computer is using the TCP Offloading feature use Netstat –t at the command prompt and view the Offload Status column for each IP connection. More information is available in the following KB; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951037.