Using LDT across wide area network

We have four offices. Each office has a file server. A project, in its entirety, is saved only on one server. That means all the files for a project are saved on one server in one office at a time.

In the past we used to move a project from one office (server) to another depending on where the majority of the work was being done.

We now have a large project that needs to be shared among all four offices.

Presently, our offices are connected with a T1 line. This has worked fine for AutoCAD as long as the drawing, including xrefs, that is being opened is under 20MB. The time to open and save is a little slow but otherwise it works fine.

If we open any drawing in LDT and try access the database everything slows to a crawl.

Is anyone out there trying to share LDT projects across a wide area network (WAN)?
How have you accomplished this?

Thanks

I am not sure what you mean by LDT project, but we have been struggling with the concept of multiple office project sharing for some time now. Originally we began by keeping multilple copies of files on multiple servers, this was obviously not a good idea. We eventually graduated to using Microsoft file replication to keep project directories synched between multiple servers. This system worked ok, but required a a lot of admin time managing the files and who can edit what. We have most recently implemented Autodesk product "Vault". The product works well for managing editing rights and monitoring access to files, but only after some additional hardware and quite a bit of training within our organization. The main problem we have seen with Vault is increased file problems and crashes, not all of which can be linked directly to Vault, but it certainly seemed to increase the more we used it. We have also recently implemented an "Avail" replication system on our servers. So far we are using it only to replicate our standards files; menus, lisp, Isogen projects, and symbol libraries, we have yet to try it on a project.

File sharing is a major issue in our organization and I would also be curios to hear how others are managing data, and job sharing between multiple offices.

We are facing the following issues as well:

Do you use a T1 or T3 connection or something else?
Do you use any third-party software to assist in file management or replication?
Do you have any access speed problems?

Any help would be appreciated.

Jason

Are you running any kind of network accelerator?

Have you had your WAN evaluated?

We have evaluated our WAN but still facing the issues like network congestion and bandwidth choking, and the poor application performance as well.

Any help?

We have also had our WAN evaluated and have used 80k worth of hardware from juniper on a test run. There was definitely noticeable improvements but still not enough to solve our problems. It is my opinion that there is still no economical way to share or open CAD files across a WAN. Maybe some day??

After reviewing market, we did some testing with Steelheads, they increased WAN speeds. Using Steelhaeds, it takes time to access the file for the first time (this is still about half the speed of the LAN) but when u access the same file for the second time, the speed is comparable to the LAN as long as the file is still cached.

Since the results even after testing were great, these appliances are in from that time only. Our IT guys are that happier with these appliances that we cant afford without being them.

Since we also want to see our employees more happier and need to increase the productivity, we have to come up with some perfect solution.

The Steelheads from Riverbed are holding good position in the market but since it is matter of great concern and of course the cost input needs to be taken into account, we have to dig a bit more deeper to take final decision.

We will definitely look for Steelhaeds positively

I fully agree with the experiences that are being shared for Riverbed. The Steelhead's work pretty well.

Moreover, a comparative cost analysis showed that paying for bandwidth upgrade every month would cost us much higher than paying for Riverbed’s one-time costs.

We were able to convince out here to deploy these appliances. Riverbed team is already being called upon and the product will be in very soon.

After we deployed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile, our IT guys recognized the difference immediately. Files that once took more than five minutes to download when working in branch offices or remotely now take only two seconds, making download speeds that were once unbearable, that too unnoticeable.

We have experienced that with the increased number of users, WAN performance starts crawling. Before Steelheads, it used to take one hour or more to deliver critical information from one site to another. The WAN links continued to be saturated most of the time; application performance suffered, and employee morale affected adversely. They became impatient and frustrated. As a result, overall productivity was affecting.

Since the Steelheads are now in, our employees are very satisfied and even a far reaching impact is observed by remote users on application performance. It’s now clear that upgrading the bandwidth to remote locations has little or no impact on application performance.

They are proving themselves to be the leader in network acceleration. They help in enabling reliable and regular complete network-based backup without interfering with other applications that require the WAN.