How to Troubleshoot Network Problems Part 1 of 3

Introduction

For many years, customers come to me with network problems like "the network works slow", "the network does not move", etc. In this short article I would like to to bring some simple rules for troubleshooting the network, and in some cases also a way to solve the problems you discover.

So after we understand that "the network is works slow", and we located the source of the problem, for example a slow application, slow slow connection to the Internet, slow conenction to one of the remote offices and so on, we should examine a number of things.

First thing is important to understand: not all problems are communication problems. To be more precise - most problems are not communication problems. A "slow network" issue can be due to one of the following reasons: 1. Application or operating system problem 2. Hardware problem - servers or workstations 3. Communication problem

From experience, if I have to divide the problems on their probablity to happen - 50-60% would be software or operating system problems, 20-30% hardware problems such as too little memory, slow disk, etc., and only what was left would be in the field of communication. The beutifull thing is that most of these problems can be discovered with the network analysis tools we will talk about later in this artivle series.