Connectivity problem - pulling my hair out !!

[Mangoman20]

I was wandering if some clever people out there can help me out. For the last +/- 2 weeks I've been experiencing intermittent connectivity.

Our setup:

+/- 35 users connecting via:

1 x Draytek 3300v load balancer. Balancing 4 WAN ports;
2 x 4096 ADSL lines ( 1 IS 1024 uncapped)
1 x 512 ADSL
1 x iburst 1024

I'm on the following CT exchanges:
021 422 x 2
021 423
021 426 x 2

I have various ISP contracts with SAIX, IS and M-Web. Shaped, unshaped (all the combinations) which I manually swap around when necessary.

During the evening things are blazing, great dl speeds on all wan ports

Come daytime +/- 08h00.. kaput... next to nothing. the system virtually grinds to a halt with intermittent connectivity.

I have checked all the lines with Telkom. They came back saying one of my 5 (I've got 2 redundant lines) was on a faulty port on the dslam which they've corrected.

Now my questions to the forum are as follows:

1. What is the best way of determining if the problem is external ie Telkom or internal ie virus/trojan on my network ?
2. What monitoring software would you suggest I use internally to log activity per IP address ?
3. Is anybody else on these exchanges having similar problems ?
4. Currently my DNS requests are handled externally, what local DNS query application can you suggest ?
5. Is there any company in the CT area that you could suggest that would be willing to advise me and maybe even assist in setting up the system to its optimum ?

I know my setup is not at the optimum and there are many tweaks, so any help would gladly be appreciated !

Feel free to PM me as well with suggestions

 

[bekdik]

Obviously something is happening in primetime which doesn't happen after hours. First thing is to determine what this is - look at things which affect users, but which maybe you don't use. Possibles are firewall, av, server etc. It may not be connectivity itself.

 

[xistenz]

4. Currently my DNS requests are handled externally, what local DNS query application can you suggest ?

I would suggest that you set up an internal linux caching DNS server for your clients to ues. Something along the lines of Engarde linux.

 

[Mangoman20]

I would suggest that you set up an internal linux caching DNS server for your clients to ues. Something along the lines of Engarde linux.

Ok, great will give that a bash.

You wouldnt happen to know of a good support compnay in CT that could look at our setup to advise ?

 

[xistenz]

You wouldnt happen to know of a good support compnay in CT that could look at our setup to advise ?

Sorry, no.

 

[gregmcc]

Setup any linux flavour you like as a dns server. You can also then setup squid proxy with something like Squidalyser or similiar (http://www.squid-cache.org/Scripts/) to view browsing usage per IP. Works like a bomb. I have slack running at home with squid and squidalyser.

You can also setup mrtg to monitor each interface and see exactly how much bandwidth you are using. Its pretty easy to setup with loads of tutorials on the net. (http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/)