Network Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting- it’s the systematic approach to resolving a network problem. It is tedious and involves elimination where step followed to resolve problemA network administrator needs to clearly understand the problem by gathering the right information to resolve issues quickly avoiding unnecessary fixes. Using network performance monitor software make troubleshooting easier because it has the following features.Netpath allows you to understand network performance and infrastructure. Wifi sniffers help to understand and identify a problem related to the network. Load balancers ensure equal distribution of workload over the available resources to avoid some nodes being idle. In contrast, others are overworked, switches and firewalls they act as a shield against illegal access into the network, that makes it easy to pinpoint issues as soon as they arise to restore the network to optimum operating condition.
Basic Network Troubleshooting Steps
1. Identify the Problem
The first step is to identify the problem by Gatheringinformation about the current state of the network using the network troubleshooting tool available. .change the I.P. address by typing ipconfig release followed by ipconfig renew to get rid of the current I.P. address and request a new one.
2. Come up with suggestion on how to resolve that network issue classify the problem as hardware or software.
3.test the suggestion, if you suspect one item is faulty try replacing it with another item if all suggestion fails it means you will go back to step two and come up again with other possible causes to the problem.
4. Putthe finding in practice
Come up with a plan to resolve the issue. If it’s hardware related issue then a purchase of hardware may be needed or repair the hardware and if the software you run the software again
5. Verify that the problem resolved entirely. And the network is working as required
6. Document the Issue
It’s important to document each stage of troubleshooting to make it easier for a network administrator to solve the issue if it recurs in future.
- Correctly propose the hypothesis to be tested at each step.
Basic Network Problems
The above steps of troubleshooting a network seek to address the following issue.
- Configuration Issue: Due to a wrong configuration, Cable Problem: The cable used to connect two devices can get faulty, shortened or can be physically damaged.
- Connectivity Problem: The port or interface on which the device is connected or configured can be physically down or faulty due to which the source host will not be able to communicate with the destination host.
- Looping the I.P., routing problem and other configuration issues, network fault may arise, and the services will get affected.
- Software Issue: Owing to software compatibility issues and version mismatch, the transmission of I.P. data packets between the source and destination is interrupted.
- Traffic overload: If the link is over utilized, then the capacity or traffic on a device is more than the carrying capacity of it, and due to overload condition, the device will start behaving abnormally.
- Network I.P. issue: Due to improper configuration of I.P. addresses and subnet mask and routing I.P. to the next hop, the source will not be able to reach the destination I.P. through the network.