Could visiting a website cause a companies whole computer system to run slowly?

Question

For example a gaming site and without downloading anything from that web site?

We are talking a big company here that employs hundreds of people all of whom have access to a computer.

And we are talking two of these employees accessing gaming sites. i.e. playing online poker on works time.

Forget the issue of whether or not they should have been doing it.

The accusation is that by so doing they caused the whole of the network to run slowly.

Answer 1

Usually companies have very high speed networks, the problem thats happens is many people do it at the same time add up the work thats already being done, everything adds up; stresses the network.
its like a drop of Water, Wont do anything but a flood will kill !

hope this helps

Answer 2

Here's a small technical ambiguity that opens up for interpretation, in your question you said "without downloading anything", technically if they are not downloading anything then no, it wouldnt slow anything down because it is not using any resources such as bandwidth or processing time, but to not download anything while visiting a web site is impossible, because the sole page is at least 1kb so there you go...

On the other hand, it depends on the services the website provides, take for instance a website that allows for downloading large files, if a user is downloading one very big file it will be using all the allowed bandwidth for his station, so it is possible to have an effect on other's stations as well. P2P applications are known to lock up ports and just suck all the bandwidth possible, so even when its not technically a web site you're viewing in a P2P app if there is one running then it would most likely be slowing down the network.

Other services like video conferencing and highly demanding network resources applications tend to slow things up too on the net, so you may want to check on what applications are installed in your computers rather than on what pages are they viewing for finding out where is the bottleneck. A web site by itself can hardly suck on your internet connection without any action being allowed on the local machine

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Edit:

After reviewing the details you provided I dare to say their activities should not have damaged significantly the network at work, Poker gaming applications can --and I think they do-- operate on the http protocol, so the ports they need to run are not really vital or used in a building-wide scope, in fact, the packet size of the communication between the poker client and the server should be very similar to a simple web browse, think of this load as if they are checking the news on yahoo or their mail.

I hardly think them playing poker could sensitively damage the network's performance; however, if they were playing poker Maybe they had other applications open that can...

[[ I just remembered seeing an online poker site where their interface was in ajax with dhtml, the site looked really nifty and like a desktop application but only relied in http... ]]

Answer 3

Without being a 'computer geek' here. The way I understand it is that a network of computers would mean each computer has a slice of that total network, therefore could not and should not be able to monopolise or take more than it's fair share of that network. Especially as it is a large company who should have complicated software and an IT staff who would have the capability of regulating that. Employee access to the net shold not compromise or even get the chance to effect any of the 'core systems' the company uses in order to run efficently. Therefore if the company is using 'slowing the network' down as an excuse for disciplinary action, there has to be more to it than that!

Answer 4

One would hope that one visitor would not cause problems. A whole lot of them might stretch capacity. There are a lot of Web-based programming methods that use computing resources as well as communications; before you download a page, the system actually has to generate that page.

Providing enough capacity, ensuring that site programming is not wasteful of system resources, and ensuring that a heavy load on Web servers does not translate into trouble for the rest of the company resources are all parts of normal system design.

Whether they've done an adequate job, of course, is their problem.

Answer 5

No, not the works computer network, but maybe the computers that they used.. Depends if they ever delete there temp internet files, cookies and web form info etc.. or the sites have left something in the harddrive! What sort of realtime is your works using? Our comp dept. block almost everyone from using the net, till dinner.. ALMOST! :-) And they can see what sites your going on and even what letters you have typed on your keyboard! But if the network has slowed down, is prob something to do with the sign of the phone network or maybe your company server.. Take your pick! :-)

Answer 6

It absolutely can! Sites like that use up bandwidth and if a lot of people on the same network are on a gaming site it can slow down the network quite a bit! The same thing if a lot of people are on sites like Youtube...if everyone on a network is watching video, it can slow down a network.

WMSEO
http://www.webmetro.com

Answer 7

I doubt that it could, even if it was surreptitiously downloading onto your computer. But that all depends on the companies bandwidth. I still very much doubt it. It is probably due to an old or badly configured server with a useless administrator. But an administrator can (and usually will), find a way to blame someone else for his/her own ineptitude. .

Answer 8

No. If a Website has a server, it can handle millions of people without getting tired. Example: Google, Yahoo, etc.

Answer 9

Not sure about the whole system running slowly, but the new photo is divaesque and dynamite.

:)

Answer 10

yes i believe so that would do it. it seems like tha more u add the more problems u get on the computer. u know