Lab - Troubleshoot Using Network Utilities

Objectives

● Interpret the output of commonly used network command line utilities.

● Determine which network utility can provide the necessary information to perform troubleshooting
activities in a bottom-up troubleshooting strategy.

Background/Scenario

There are a number of problems that can cause networking connectivity issues. In this lab, you will use
network utilities that can help you to identify connectivity issues in wireless networks. The network
command line utilities are also useful to detect problems in a wired network.

Required Resources

● 1 PC (Windows 10 with a wired and wireless NIC installed)

● A wireless router

● Internet connectivity

Instructions

Part 1: Network Connections

Step 1: Connect to a wireless network.

a. Disconnect the Ethernet cable from your computer. An “orange triangle” appears over the
Connections icon in the system tray.

b. Click the Connection icon in the system tray.

Question:

What is the name of an available wireless connection?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary.

Hide Answer

c. Click one of the available wireless connections. Connect to the network. Enter login information if
required. Confirm that the connection is successful.

d. Confirm that the connection is successful.

Step 2: Verify that the network adapter is operational.

When a connectivity problem is reported, the first step in a bottom-up troubleshooting strategy is to
determine whether the NIC and the operating system settings on the computer are functioning correctly.

a. Open the Control Panel, select Network and Sharing Center. Right-click Start and select Control
Panel. Click Network and Sharing Center. Click Change adapter settings.

b. Select the Wireless Network Connection. Right click the adapter and select Status from the menu. If
the Status choice is grayed out, it indicates that the adapter is either not enabled or not connected to a
wireless SSID.

c. In the status window, verify that the connection is enabled and that the connection SSID is correct.
Click Details to open the adapter details window.
d. The Details window shows the current IP configuration active on the network adapter. It displays
both the IPv4 and IPv6 configurations. If DHCP is active, the lease information is shown.

Questions:

Is DHCP enabled on the PC?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary.

Hide Answer

When does the DHCP lease expire?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary.

Hide Answer

Step 3: Confirm correct network configuration.

a. Open a Command Prompt.

b. Enter ping 127.0.0.1. The IP address 127.0.0.1 is also referred to as the localhost address. A
successful ping to the localhost address indicates that the TCP/IP protocol stack is operational on the
computer. If the localhost address does not reply to a ping command, there might be an issue with the
device driver or the network interface card.

Question:
Was the ping command successful?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Yes

Hide Answer

c. Use the ipconfig command. Identify the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway addresses
configured on the computer.

If the local IPv4 address is a host address on the 169.254.0.0/16 network, the computer received its IP
address configuration through the Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) feature of the Windows
operating system.

Question:

What problems can cause a computer to receive an APIPA address?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

The computer did not receive an IP address from the DHCP server. There may not be a DHCP server on
the network, the DHCP server is inaccessible from this computer, or there are no more available IP
addresses.

Hide Answer

If the computer is assigned an APIPA address, there might be an issue with the DHCP server. If the
wireless router is providing the DHCP services, confirm that the DHCP service is configured correctly and
that the IP address range is large enough to accommodate all the devices that may attach wirelessly.
Question:

What is the IP address of the default gateway assigned to your PC?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary. The IP address of the default gateway will depend on the configuration of the DHCP
server.

Hide Answer

d. To test if the PC can reach the default gateway through the network, ping the default gateway IP
address.

A successful ping indicates that there is a connection between the computer and the default gateway.

If the ping command does not complete successfully, make sure that the IP address of the gateway is
typed correctly and that the wireless connection is active.

e. Type net view. The net view command, when issued on a Windows PC, displays the computer
names of other Windows devices in your Windows domain or workgroup. When net view displays the
names of other computers it indicates that your computer can successfully send messages across the
network.

C:\Users\Student> net view

Question:

List the computer names that are displayed.

Answer Area
Type your answer here.

Answers will vary. In this example, there are two computers listed.

Hide Answer

Note: Depending on the configuration of the PCs in your lab, net view may not return any computer
names or may display an error message. If this is the case, move on to the next step.

Part 2: External Connectivity

Step 1: Test external connectivity.

If you have an external connection, use the following methods to verify the operation of the default
gateway and the DNS service.

Note: Your output may be varied.

a. The Windows tracert command performs the same function as the traceroute command used
within the Cisco IOS. Use the tracert command along with your school’s Web site URL or the Cisco
Networking Academy Web site. For example, enter tracert www.netacad.com.

C:\Users\Student> tracert www.netacad.com

Tracing route to Liferay-Prod-1009279580.us.-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com [52.5.233.103]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

 1 1 ms 57 ms 3 ms 192.168.1.1

2 * 12 ms 12 ms 10.39.176.1

3 14 ms 28 ms 11 ms 100.127.65.248

4 10 ms 26 ms 21 ms 70.169.73.90

5 35 ms 32 ms 36 ms 68.1.2.109

<output omitted>

Trace complete.

The tracert command displays the path that the packet takes between the source and destination IP
addresses. Each router that the packet travels through to reach the destination address is shown as a
hop in the tracert output. If there is a network issue on the path, the tracert output will stop after the
last successful hop. The first hop in the output is the default gateway of the source PC, the last entry will
be the destination address when the tracert command completes successfully.

b. The command tracert uses the configured DNS server to resolve the fully qualified domain name to
an IP address before beginning to trace the router to the destination. Using tracert or ping with a domain
name instead of an IP address can confirm that the DNS server is providing name resolution services.

Questions:

What IP address was returned by the DNS server?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary. At the time of the writing, the IP address for www.netacad.com is 52.5.233.103.

Hide Answer

What would happen if the DNS server could not resolve the domain name of the server?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

You will be unable to access the web server.

Hide Answer

c. Use the nslookup command with the IP address you just discovered. The nslookup command is a
utility that can be used to troubleshoot DNS problems.

Type nslookup 72.163.6.233. The IP address in this example is assigned to a server at Cisco Systems.

Questions:

What domain name was returned?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

reports-prod.cisco.com

Hide Answer

What DNS server did the nslookup command use to resolve the domain name?
Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary.

Hide Answer

Does the DNS server IP address match the one displayed in the ipconfig /all output?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Yes.

Hide Answer

d. When the configured DNS server cannot resolve domain names or IP addresses, it is possible to set
nslookup to try to resolve the names using a different DNS server. If another DNS server can resolve the
addresses, but the configured DNS server cannot, there could be a problem with the DNS server
configuration. Enter nslookup /? to view the options that can be used to test and troubleshoot DNS
issues.

C:\Users\Student> nslookup /?

Usage:

nslookup [-opt ...] # interactive mode using default server

nslookup [-opt ...] - server # interactive mode using 'server'

 nslookup [-opt ...] host # just look up 'host' using default server

nslookup [-opt ...] host server # just look up 'host' using 'server'

Step 2: Test Application layer connectivity.

Open a web browser. Enter www.cisco.com in the Address field.

Question:

Does the Cisco.com web page load in the browser? What underlying network functions have to be
working for the web page load?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

For the web pages to load, it involves DNS server, HTTP server, and TCP/IP.

Hide Answer

Reflection

1. The steps in this lab represent a bottom-up troubleshooting strategy, where the effort starts with
the OSI model physical layer and finishes with verifying the functionality of the Application layer. What
are the other two troubleshooting strategies used by network technicians to isolate problems?

Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Top-down or divide and conquer.

Hide Answer

2. Which strategy would try first when presented with a network connectivity problem? Explain.
Answer Area

Type your answer here.

Answers will vary. You could try to use ping and tracert to determine where the issue may be occurring,
inside or outside your network.