Cato SDP Client Performance Troubleshooting

Issue 

Users are experiencing performance issues while using the Cato SDP Client. This article describes basic troubleshooting steps that may be considered when having persistent performance issues with Cato Client. 

Possible Causes 

Varying factors may affect the connection of the SDP client making it hard to determine the cause without any initial troubleshooting.

Possible causes could stem from local network misconfiguration, Local ISP limitations, PoP instability, unintended connection to a remote PoP, and more.

Troubleshooting 

An SDP client is dependent on the speed of the customer's local connection to the Internet. Whatever the speed of the connection is, the SDP client cannot be faster. 

Depending on the region, Cato Client connections may have a maximum throughput. See Supported Throughput for Cato SDP Clients. 

The following are steps to troubleshoot performance issues:

1. The first step is to figure out if the internet connection is the focal point of the issue.

• Disconnect from the SDP Client. If the user is configured with Always-On, the administrator can configure a 15-minute bypass code via CMA.
• Run a SpeedTest to determine the Internet speed. It's recommended to download to Ookla Speed Test Application instead of using the browser as different browsers can impact performance.

Note: Speedtest can run either in multi or single connections. File transfers, like SMB, use a single connection. Hence you'll probably need to run the speedtest with a single connection to get accurate results when troubleshooting the bad performance of file transfer. 

• If the SpeedTest results without Cato Client are bad, try restarting the Internet modem or switching to a different network.
• If the SpeedTest results are fine, connect the Client back to Cato and run SpeedTest again against the same server as in the previous step.
• If while connected to Cato Client, the SpeedTest results are poor, continue with the next steps below.

2. Temporarily disable security software on the computer or device. Firewalls and anti-virus software can slow down SDP traffic by filtering or scanning outgoing packets. This will help determine if the security software is the cause of the performance issue.

3. Check for any high CPU utilization on the device caused by other installed applications. This applies to Windows Client before v5.4. See Windows SDP Client Hangs Due To High CPU Utilization

4. If the Client's DNS servers are not the default Cato servers (We recommend using Cato DNS for better performance), it is essential to make sure they are located in the same country where the SDP client is located. Distant DNS servers can harm performance due to slow response to DNS queries and might provide a server IP that isn't in the SDP client region. For more information see Improving Network Performance for Internal DNS Servers

• For internal DNS server IPs, use the CMA routing table to identify their location.
• For public DNS server IPs, use ip2location. 

5. Contact Cato Support for additional troubleshooting. You can record the issue and automatically send the logs to Cato Support. For more information, see Recording Issues Using the SDP Client.