Network upgrade leads to poor Eudora performance

[msachs]

We recently had our network upgraded from cat 3 to cat 6. We have client Macs networked to an XServe. Users have their Eudora settings in their docs folder, but this is physically located on the XServe. This worked fine prior to the network upgrade. Immediately after the upgrade to cat 6, Eudora started misbehaving (ranging from crashing upon opening the application to freezing the client Mac for several minutes when checking for new e-mail or sending a message. Occasionally, one would get an error message that the Eudora settings cannot be found, but then after pressing 'OK', it would work (but slowly). No other application appears to have problems after the upgrade and other network based functions are much faster (e.g., web browsing, ssh connections, opening and using files on the Server, etc).

Based on the error messages, we tried creating a new Eudora setting for one user. This seemed to improve the situation somewhat, but not completely. There is still slowness and freezing occurs, but less frequently (sometimes Eudora even behaves faster as we expected it would, but it doesn't do so consistently). At this point, I would be happy to have Eudora behave as 'slowly' as it did prior to the netwoek upgrade.

Having the Eudora settings located on the drive of a client Mac seems to solve most of the issues, but there is still slowness when transferring messages from an IMAP mbox to a local one. This also was not an issue prior to upgrading our network. This is not a solution as users do not always use the same Mac, so it is important that their Eudora settings be located with their user files on the XServe.

The Eudora configuration for one of the users is as follows:

----System Information
Platform: Macintosh
System Version: 10.4.3
Processor: Unidentified (0000013C)
Physical RAM Installed: 1048,576K
Total RAM: 2097,148K
Eudora Version: 6.2.3
TCP/IP Version: OpenTransport
Main Video: 32 bit color at 1680x1050 pixels

----Modified Settings
<x-eudora-setting:1> Mishawaka (Helvetica) "Select the font for message and mailbox windows from the popup menu."
<x-eudora-setting:6> 60 "How often (in minutes) Eudora will check for mail.

Must be between 0 and 999999."
<x-eudora-setting:14> n (y) "When checked, windows open to the size required to display all text."
<x-eudora-setting:18> y (n) "When checked, mail is not immediately deleted from the POP server."
<x-eudora-setting:20> n (y) "When checked, an alert dialog is displayed when your attention is needed."
<x-eudora-setting:21> n (y) "When checked, a sound is played when your attention is needed."
<x-eudora-setting:30> 12 "Enter the font size to use when printing.

Must be between 3 and 127."
<x-eudora-setting:35> y (n) "When checked, you are prompted before you delete unread mail."
<x-eudora-setting:42> 256 (n) "Eudora will switch messages if you press the arrow keys with the modifier keys you select here held down."
<x-eudora-setting:46> y (n) "When checked, Eudora will ask for each styled message whether you want the styles to be sent."
<x-eudora-setting:48> y "When checked, real addresses replace nicknames when switching fields in the composition window."
<x-eudora-setting:64> 2058 "When checked, this column is displayed in the mailbox windows."
<x-eudora-setting:69> 1 "These determine how Eudora figures out what mail is unread. Most people should use Normal Method."
<x-eudora-setting:71> 24587 (11) "Eudora can log certain actions to a file named “Eudora Log” in your Eudora Folder. Check the item(s) you wish to log."
<x-eudora-setting:86> y "When checked, attachments are placed in the Finder's Trash when the messages they arrived with are transferred into Eudora's Trash."
<x-eudora-setting:91> y "When checked, Eudora will use MIME Quoted-Printable encoding when necessary to protect special characters. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:97> 2 "Select if a message is automatically opened when the previous message has been deleted or transferred. 0 for nothing, 1 for next message, 2 for next unread message, 3 for next message if unread, 4 for next message if unread & sa…
<x-eudora-setting:101> 15 "Number of days to leave mail on server, if you have Leave Mail On Server checked. Leaving it blank means forever.

Must be between 1 and 30."
<x-eudora-setting:102> y (n) "When checked, mail deleted from Eudora's Trash is removed from the server on the next mail check."
<x-eudora-setting:105> 1073741824 "These settings can be used to limit the times of day when Eudora checks for mail automatically."
<x-eudora-setting:122> y "When checked, Eudora will do only synchronous disk i/o. This may be needed by buggy SCSI disk drivers."
<x-eudora-setting:130> 2 (1) "Select the type of display for the toolbar buttons."
<x-eudora-setting:131> y "The toolbar can either be displayed horizontally across the top of the screen or vertically across the left side of the screen."
<x-eudora-setting:134> 2008 "The number of the settings screen Eudora was last viewing."
<x-eudora-setting:136> y "When checked, you are prompted before you delete a message you are composing."
<x-eudora-setting:152> y "When checked, you are prompted before you empty the trash mailbox. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:153> y "When checked, mail is checked for at the specified interval."
<x-eudora-setting:154> y "Don’t attempt to interact with PPP at all."
<x-eudora-setting:199> y "When checked, Eudora will do “smart paste,” to manage whitespace around pasted text. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:203> y "When checked, while typing in an address field, Eudora will automatically expand it to the first matching nickname."
<x-eudora-setting:204> y "When checked, nickname auto-completion and nickname highlighting features will respond a little sooner (this may make typing a little less responsive on slower machines)."
<x-eudora-setting:206> y "When checked, nickname auto-completion and nickname highlighting features will wait until there are no more keystrokes to process before responding to a keypress (may make it easier to type). Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “…
<x-eudora-setting:214> y "When checked, nicknames in recipient fields will be displayed in bold."
<x-eudora-setting:223> y "When checked, Eudora will check and send mail simultaneously in the background."
<x-eudora-setting:230> 60203 "Last version of Eudora to use this settings file."
<x-eudora-setting:231> 60203 "Highest version of Eudora to us this settings file."
<x-eudora-setting:249> y "Controls whether or not the spell-checker runs all the time, or only when you ask it to run. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:250> 1081348 "These options control Eudora’s internal spell-checker."
<x-eudora-setting:252> y "When checked, Eudora will automatically download graphics in HTML messages when the message is viewed."
<x-eudora-setting:286> 33 "These settings control how Eudora will apply additional email specific rules to speak messages. Set to 1 to turn off completely."
<x-eudora-setting:293> y "When checked, Eudora will maintain a history of recently used addresses which are automatically detected as you type. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:295> y "When checked, addresses you reply to will automatically be added to the History List file. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:315> y "When checked, addresses you type in recipient fields will automatically be added to the History List file. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:337> y "When checked, Eudora will warn you when it can't find the Network Setup Extension. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:347> 4 "The current SSL setting for POP.0 means no SSL. Other stuff to follow."
<x-eudora-setting:349> 1 "The current SSL setting for SMTP.0 means no SSL. Other stuff to follow."
<x-eudora-setting:350> 4 "The current SSL setting for IMAP.0 means no SSL. Other stuff to follow."
<x-eudora-setting:362> 41312 "Settings related to the use of the junk mailbox. To turn things off: 1 - whole thing 2 - trimming 4 - trim warning. 8 - refiltering 16 - unread mail indicator 32 - existing mailbox warning 64 - intro dialog 128 - immedia…
<x-eudora-setting:379> y "We should only ask once at startup if we should make Eudora the default mailer."
<x-eudora-setting:380> 1 "Bits regarding the web search feature."
<x-eudora-setting:383> y "Keep a search widget on the toolbar. Setting reversed; use “n” for ON, “y” for OFF!"
<x-eudora-setting:391> 1 "Settings that control emoticon display. 0 - default 1 - don't display as images 2 - send images embedded in email 3 - both 1 and 2."
<x-eudora-setting:393> y "Turn this on if you want to be asked about rebuilding tables of contents. You'd better be an expert before turning this on."

----End System Information

[msachs]

After much head scratching and packet sniffing, our network folks determined that these problems we were experiencing after the cat6 upgrade, was due to a hardware issue that our Eudora setup was a particularly good 'canary' in detecting. Immediately after the faulty component was replaced, Eudora started working fine (if not better than pre-upgrade). It turns out that the hardware issue was indeed causing other network problems, but they were barely noticeable, of brief duration, and not horribly annoying.