We use a small program at work to manage work flows. It is installed on 10 computers. The program connects to a database on a separate computer to get and write all the information. The database is a MS Access .mdb. My question is what is the best way to set up this network and the sharing of the database file to get the fastest speeds. Right now we are simply sharing the folder on the computer the database is on. We have a wireless network with a Linksys SRX400 Router (WRT54GX4). Most of the computers have Linksys SRX400 Network Cards (WMP54GX4); a couple have Linksys 54G network cards (WMP54G); and a couple have Netgear network cards (WG311T). The computer with the shared folder has a SRX400 card, and the program runs slow even on other computers with the SRX400 card. When using the program on the computer with the database everything runs lightning fast. Its the access over the network that is slowing things down. Would a wired network be faster than wireless? What about a Network Storage Drive connected to the router? If anyone can give me some ideas on how to improve the speed/performance of the network I would greatly appreciate it.
Wired is always going to be faster than wireless. Aside from that, the speed depends on the size of the db. I would assume that it's fairly large. a Network Attached Storage device wouldn't speed up your transfer speeds, it would just free up the pc that's storing the db. You have 2 options: 1) If you want to stick to wireless, get yourself an 802.11n router and wireless 802.11n cards for each workstation. 2) Wired networks are much faster, get yourself a Gigabit switch and gigabit NICs for each workstation. Hope that helped.
