General Troubleshooting Methods

One of the first signs of trouble on the network is a loss of communications by one or more hosts. If a host refuses to come up at all the first time it is added to the network, the problem might lie in one of the configuration files, or in the network interface. If a single host suddenly develops a problem, the network interface might be the cause. If the hosts on a network can communicate with each other but not with other networks, the problem could lie with the router, or it could lie in another network.

You can use the ifconfig program to obtain information on network interfaces and netstat to display routing tables and protocol statistics. Third-party network diagnostic programs provide a number of troubleshooting utilities. Refer to third-party documentation for information.

Less obvious are the causes of problems that degrade performance on the network. For example, you can use tools like ping to quantify problems like the loss of packets by a host.