Basic Network Troubleshooting Tips

Here you will learn network troubleshooting tips, fix tcp/ip errors, tcp/ip settings, internet connectivity errors, how to fix pc errors, lan connectivity issues, traceroute and ping commands. Whether your operating system is Windows or Linux network problems are likely to arise. Many times the network problems arisee due to improperly configured TCP/IP settings. Following is the basic checklist to identify and troubleshoot the basic networking errors.
1. First of all you should learn what stopped working server or client computer also see if the outage affecting the other computers or only one.


2. If you server stopped working you should inform the users of the server and you should start working on fixing the error.

3. If a single client computer stopped working or disconnected from the network, ask the user of that computer that what recent changes cause the server to stop working such as newly installed software or games, service pakcs, internet software, new hardware or any other thing.

4. Check the physical network connectivity. The most network problems arise due to the physical layers failure.

5. Check all the network cable connections. You can start at the NIC and check if the green light is blinking then check the hub and see if the computer is getting the link across the cable.

6. Get a cable tester to check the connectivity of the cables.

7. Finally start pinging the network both Windows and Linux have the PING command. You can use ping command in this way start > Run > cmd > type "ping" then IP address of the other computer.

How to Troubleshoot Connectivity problems

1. Use the ping command to test the basic connectivity. By using the ping command you can isolate network hardware problems and incompatible configurations. By using the path ping you can detect packet loss.

2. If you want to see the Ping's statistics then you ping -t command and press enter to continue and if you want to stop then press CTRL+BREAKTo watch Ping statistics, use the ping -t command. To see statistics and continue, press CTRL+BREAK. To stop, press CTRL+C.

3. If you remote system is across the delay link, such as satellite link responses may take longer.

4. Check the event logs for network card and other hardware and software configurations and connectivity related entries.

5. Check whether the NIC card is on the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

6. Check other computers that use the same gateway and are plugged into the same hub or switch and if these computers do not show any network connectivity problem then the problem is on the only one computer.

7. Contact the vendor of each NIC and motherboard and update the BIOS.

8. Replace the network adapter of the system with the good configured system and see if the same error arise again.

Conclusion

As a network administrator, we need to learn about the Basic Network Troubleshooting solutions. Of course, there are many network analyzers in the market,such as Colasoft Capsa Network Analyzer, which can provide us with more advanced & easier network problems troubleshooting solutions. learn more about Colasoft Capsa Network Analyzer, please visit http://www.colasoft.com/capsa/.

This article is rewriten by Tammy Zhou from Colasoft.com, please read the original copy of this article here: Basic Network Troubleshooting.