Moskie

So I've recently located to the other side of the country (Bay Area kicks ass), but have kept the same programming job for my company in Baltimore. I VPN into their network, which sets me up so it's as if I'm directly attached to the network.

Web sites hosted on their servers seem to respond well enough, the lag being a reasonable amount to deal with. But browsing the network shares is atrociously slow. Is there a way to speed it up?

I'm almost hoping that there's an alternative application to Windows Explorer that might be better. Any ideas?

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Greetings and salutations.

cyrnel

Moskie, congrats on the Bay Area relo! I was probably as glad to get out, but mostly because of the traffic.

Browsing over a WAN is evil. The few times I've had to fight this I never went anywhere without my list of shortcuts. Oh, and I'd kill the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" option in Folder Options. Whenever possible, browse once.

Which version of Windows are you using? Is it set to view remote scheduled tasks and printers? Check for and delete these keys:

Tasks:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace\{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

Printers:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace\{{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}}

There are other things you can do at the servers and to the net but they can be tough sells. You could also be fighting servers with reduced priority for file sharing. Are they windows or Samba boxes?

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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195