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How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

Internet connection problems can be frustrating. Rather than mashing F5 and desperately trying to reload your favorite website when you experience a problem, here are some ways you can troubleshoot the problem and identify the cause.

Ensure you check the physical connections before getting too involved with troubleshooting. Someone could have accidentally kicked the router or modem’s power cable or pulled an Ethernet cable out of a socket, causing the problem.
Ping

One of the first things to try when your connection doesn’t seem to be working properly is the ping command. Open a Command Prompt window from your Start menu and run a command like ping google.com or ping howtogeek.com.

This command sends several packets to the address you specify. The web server responds to each packet it receives. In the command below, we can see that everything is working fine – there’s 0% packet loss and the time each packet takes is fairly low.
If you see packet loss (in other words, if the web server didn’t respond to one or more of the packets you sent), this can indicate a network problem. If the web server sometimes takes a much longer amount of time to respond to some of your other packets, this can also indicate a network problem. This problem can be with the website itself (unlikely if the same problem occurs on multiple websites), with your Internet service provider, or on your network (for example, a problem with your router).

Note that some websites never respond to pings. For example, ping microsoft.com will never results in any responses.

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Common Network Problems and their Solutions

Wireless Network Shows Signal but won't Connect

Wireless networking is a terrific way to make sure that your employees are able to move freely while maintaining access to all their business files. However, some notebooks and computers occasionally show a strong signal from the wireless router but still don't connect. If you encounter this problem, try putting the computer right next to the wireless router and see if it connects then. If it does, then that suggests a problem with the system hardware. A network card occasionally receives a strong signal but doesn't transmit as effectively. Updating the network card's drivers might solve this problem, but it is also possible that you may need to replace the hardware entirely should this occur.

Network Outages and Inaccessible Files

If you experience a high number of network outages at unpredictable times or you find your employees unable to access files they are supposed to have access to, you might be experiencing a NetBIOS conflict. This problem tends to be most common on older systems, particularly when they use Windows NT, but the issue exists in other Windows systems as well. If you have recently upgraded to a new service pack or received another large system update, you are more at risk of this happening than previously. You can bypass this problem by disabling WINS/NetBT name resolution unless it is required by a specific program. You could also rename a computer or domain to resolve possible naming issues.

IP Conflicts

By default, Windows ensures that only one IP address per device has place on the network at once. However, sometimes two devices wind up getting assigned the same address. In this case, the network might wind up blocking one of the devices, which prevents access to protected files and can cause network lag not only for the conflicting devices but for all connected machines. You can avoid this problem by reconfiguring your DHCP setup to ensure that static IP addresses are excluded from the pool. This will reconfigure IP addresses appropriately, which will resolve the conflict and in return will lead to all machines on the network getting the proper access that they are supposed to get.

Slow Application Response

A common issue business networks encounter is a slow reaction time for applications, especially shortly after a computer starts up or connects to a network. This is usually a sign of high bandwidth use. You should perform a time study of your employees to make sure they aren't viewing too many videos via streaming or downloading large files. Enforcing proper network use may be a good way of keeping your bandwidth use in hand. If your employees are already using the network properly, you might not have the amount of bandwidth you need to operate your business. In this case, you should look into upgrading your network to properly fit your expanding business needs.

Poor VoIP Quality

Stutters, delays, and other problems with VoIP can hamper a network's productivity and hurt telecommunications efforts. The most common issue with business VoIP is a network stutter. This can be resolved by installing jitter buffers, which cache VoIP packets and allow them to be accessed during the communication in order to ensure a smooth stream. Jitter buffers can be customized to fit the needs of your network and are rather easy and inexpensive to install. Another option you can use to prevent this issue is a new playback codec with a packet loss concealment feature. Packet loss is the other major cause of stuttering audio and video, and making sure your codecs and drivers are up to date helps a lot.

These common network issues can strike any business, but they are easily resolved with only a little bit of time and effort. You can use the advice outlined above to handle these minor issues and free up your IT team for other more significant problems. This will save you a lot of time and give you a chance to boost the overall productivity of your business network.

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Introduction to network troubleshooting

Imagine you try to view a web site, and the pages load slowly or not at all. When this happens, it is useful (though sometimes a bit tricky) to determine where the problem is occurring. For example, is the web server experiencing issues? Or the network connection between your computer and the server? Or maybe even your computer itself?

To help answer these questions, you can use various tools to do some basic network troubleshooting. Some of these tools are run from the command line. Alternatively, many web sites provide online versions of these tools that you can use in your web browser.

Troubleshooting network connectivity

Sometimes you just want to know if your computer can reach a remote host. To test basic network connectivity, you can use the ping tool. Ping enables you to quickly determine if a remote host is available. For this reason, it is often the first thing administrators do when troubleshooting network issues. The ping program works by sending a special type of packet to the host and then waiting for a response back. If a response is received, then basic network connectivity exists between the remote host and the local computer.

The traceroute (or tracert on Microsoft Windows) tool enables you to view the complete route network packets take from your computer to a remote host. Whereas ping simply tells you if a remote host is active and responding to ping requests, traceroute provides much more detail about the actual route packets follow from one host to another. For example, traceroute can help you determine if (and where) there is a bottleneck in the network connection between your computer and a remote host.