Troubleshooting
computer network is among the most important job descriptions of the
network administrators, system administrators, network technicians and
the IT consultants. A computer network can have different kinds of
problems such as it can be infected with virus and spyware, attacked by
hackers, accessed by unauthorized users and may face connectivity
failure issues due to the faulty network devices or configurations.
Following is a list of the basic network troubleshooting commands that
are built-in the Windows based operating systems and UNIX etc. The
right use of these troubleshooting commands can helps a lot in
diagnosing and resolving the issues with your computer network.
PING
Ping is the most important troubleshooting command and it checks the
connectivity with the other computers. For example your system’s IP
address is 10.10.10.10 and your network servers’ IP address is
10.10.10.1 and you can check the connectivity with the server by using
the Ping command in following format.
At DOS prompt type Ping 10.10.10.1 and press enter
If you get the reply from the server then the connectivity is ok and if
you get the error message like this “Request time out” this means the
there is some problem in the connectivity with the server.
IPCONFIG
IPconfig is another important command in Windows. It shows the IP
address of the computer and also it shows the DNS, DHCP, Gateway
addresses of the network and subnet mask.
At DOS prompt type ipconfig and press enter to see the IP address of
your computer.
At DOS prompt type inconfig/all and press enter to see the detailed
information.
NSLOOKUP
NSLOOKUP is a TCP/IP based command and it checks domain name aliases,
DNS records, operating system information by sending query to the
Internet Domain Name Servers. You can resolve the errors with the DNS
of your network server
HOSTNAME
Hostname command shows you the computer name.
At DOS prompt type Hostname and press enter
NETSTAT
NETSTAT utility shows the protocols statistics and the current
established TCP/IP connections in the computer.
NBTSTAT
NBTSTAT helps to troubleshoot the NETBIOS name resolutions problems.
ARP
ARP displays and modifies IP to Physical address translation table that
is used by the ARP protocols.
FINGER
Finger command is used to retrieve the information about a user on a
network.
TRACERT
Tracert command is used to determine the path of the remote system.
This tool also provides the number of hops and the IP address of each
hop. For example if you want to see that how many hops (routers) are
involved to reach blockmeproxy.com
and what’s the IP address of each hop then use the following command.
At command prompt type tracert blockmeproxy.com
you will see a list of all the hops and their IP addresses.
TRACEROUTE
Traceroute is a very useful network debugging command and it is used in
locating the server that is slowing down the transmission on the
internet and it also shows the route between the two systems.
ROUTE
Route command allows you to make manual entries in the routing table.
Hopefully the above mentioned commands will help you to diagnose the
troubleshooting your computer networking problems.
