Network Performance Analysis

The NIPING Program can be used to diagnose the network or measure network metrics between any two machines running SAP software, for example between:

•Frontend PC and application server

•Two application servers, perhaps belonging to different SAP systems

•Application server and database server or live cache server

•RFC server or client programs and application server

For self guided troubleshooting, please try our Guided Answer for Network analysis.

The NIPING result can be used to measure throughput and roundtrip time and perform stability test for LAN or WAN used. Detailed information can be found in following SAP note.

• SAP Note 500235 - Network Diagnosis with NIPING

• Obtaining NIPING test parameters via RSORASTT

Example commands;

For demonstration purposes the following example gives commands for a long LAN stability test;

On the client (source) side: niping -c -H your target server name here -B 10 -L 4000 -P -D 900
On the server (target side): niping -s -I 0 (the last character is zero, not the letter O)

So in the above case you have defined the client (-c) and server (-s) commands and the duration of the NIPING trace (4000 loops with a delay of 900ms between each loop which will last for approximately 1 hour).

Example output;

The results from the output will be as follows;

------- times -----
avg    4.695 ms
max    36.867 ms
min    0.658 ms
tr  12479.766 kB/s
av2     1.178 ms
tr2 49729.472 kB/s

The important values here are av2 and tr2.
av2: This will test your latency between machines, also known as round trip time. For a typical setup, a value of 0.7ms or less is considered a good value although this can vary. If this value is higher, this may suggest communication delay issues between your systems.
tr2: The average throughput will display the real data volume capability of your system connnections (as opposed to bandwidth which is ideal data volume allowance). For example, if you have a 1GB connection and you are only getting throughput values of 100Mbps, this could suggest an performance issue where high data transfers occur.

Please see more about NIPING output results here;

SAP Note 1100926 - FAQ: Network Performance 

HttpWatch is a third-party browser plugin which can be used to trace the HTTP/HTTPS traffic between the browser and server triggered by each action you take within a web application. It can be downloaded via http://www.httpwatch.com/download/.
This tool can be used to capture trace file for scenarios which having performance issue and get *.hwl files for further analysis.

• 1697063 - HttpWatch - Performance Analysis

• 1558903 - How To Trace a Portal Scenario Using HttpWatch

Sometimes, the root cause can be either Network, ABAP or a combination of both. In these cases it is recommended that you perfrom an ST12 trace along with a HTTP watch to determine where the issue is. This is noted here:

• 2424394 - Using HTTP trace and ST12 trace to diagnose slow response in customer portal

The SAP GUI gets installed on the client side, typically within Windows. This allows access to the SAP system through the front end client side and also assists with storing user preferences and logon details.

This communication between the SAP GUI and the backend SAP system can be the source of network related issues and slowness. Firstly, it is recommended that you have the latest version of SAP GUI installed on your desktop. See:
66971 - Supported SAP GUI platforms
1053737 - Expected release dates for SAP GUI for Windows
147519 - Maintenance strategy / deadlines for SAP GUI for Windows / SAP GUI for Java

Next to ensuring your GUI is within recommendations, a GUI performance trace should be performed to determine if the issue is on the GUI side or the Network side: 851012 - SAP GUI Performance trace

A performance issue will sometimes occur on the GUI side when the user preferences allow for population of the menu with large amounts of information. This can be checked by trying the "low speed" connection setting within the GUI: 161053 - Using SAP GUI in WAN

Windows tools

• TRACERT (WINDOWS) / TRACEROUTE (UNIX)
  Useful for: Displaying the path and transit delays between source and destination on a network.

• NETSTAT
  Useful for: Viewing active TCP/UDP connections in real time.

• NSLOOKUP
  Useful for: Resolving domain names to IP addresses

• IPCONFIG (WINDOWS)
  Useful for: Showing available connections on your Client side

Other tools

• Wireshark
  Useful for: Packet and network analysis on the OS side.