- High Roll-wait/GUI time showed in workload statistics(ST03/STAD)
- High response time in LAN check by ping
- High response time when performing RFC calls
- Communication issue between SAP instance and Database instance
Hardware issues
Poorly sized infrastructure
The network performance should be diagnosed when the following symptoms occur.
Be aware these are only typical symptoms, are NOT a definitive indication of a network performance issue.
Network issues generally focus on problems with transmitting large data volumes or the speed at which the data is communicated. This can occur due to the following:
This can be wide ranging and can involve port issues (where the cable is connected), a router error (connects different networks), or a switch error (connects different devices).
A network typically consists of multiple switches, routers and cables. For high volumes of data, the cables need to have available “bandwidth” to efficiently transfer the data. For example, a cable with a bandwidth of 1Mb/s (known as Ethernet) will allow less data transfer than a 100Mb/s cable (known as fast Ethernet).
SAP Note 500235 - Network Diagnosis with NIPING
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.
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
- 2424394 - Using HTTP trace and ST12 trace to diagnose slow response in customer portal
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.
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:
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
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 addressesIPCONFIG (WINDOWS)
Useful for: Showing available connections on your Client side- Wireshark
Useful for: Packet and network analysis on the OS side.
Windows tools
Other tools
The RSORASTT tool can be used to graph NIPING outputs with the import option.
The tool can be found here; 1299493 - Loadable SAP Support Monitors
In oder to graph your NIPING output, you need to run a "Long LAN stability test" where your Latency will be docuemented for a minimum of 1 hour. This can then be imported into RSORASTT tool. This is very helpful for visualizing your Network latency over a long period of time.
Steps to graph NIPING results;
- Collect Long LAN stability results
- Save as plain text file
- Open plain text file and use "select all" option
- Copy and past output
- In RSORASTT, choose "import clipboard" option
- Name your server
Sample output;
203924 - SAP WAN Network settings
578118 - Long response times on the SAP GUI
- 161053 - Using SAP GUI in WAN
545136 - FAQ: Test tools for RFC connection
1139596 - SAP GUI: Connection to partner 'sapserver:sapdp00' broken
2443079 - Network performance analysis - LAN check by PING (OS01)
- 1227116 - Creating network traces
- 1969914 - Packet scanning tutorial using wireshark
- 1370469 - How to perform a TCP trace with Wireshark