How to Troubleshoot your Network

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:42:49 +0000

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How often have you had trouble with your home network, and tried various different programs to attempt to figure out the problem? Wouldn’t it be easier to have one tool that can do pretty much everything you need to keep your network running properly? During a GoToMeeting recently, Uncle John showed us what he keeps in his tool belt when he needs to diagnose any network problems he may come across.

Axence NetTools is network monitoring with alerting, real-time & historical charts of response time & packet lost. E-mail and sound notifications available when a host is down. In their own words:

WinTools lists exhaustive system information from Windows computers: running processes & services, registry, event log, disk, memory & CPU information. Port scanner checks for all open ports and running services. It can discover some Trojans/spyware. Network scanner discovers all nodes, their IP/MAC and services running on them. NetStat displays your computer’s inbound and outbound connections, lists all open TCP/UDP ports, with the remote IP address & the process using the connection. TCP/IP Workshop establishes low-level TCP/UDP connections to troubleshoot and test network services. It can send raw data to any remote port. Other tools: ping, fast trace route, lookup, bandwidth test tool, SNMP browser. Version 3.1 adds automating most frequent functions.

NetStat Displays all the inbound and outbound connections to your computer and lists all open ports. Additionally, NetStat maps open ports and established connections to the owning application.

Service and Port Scanner Allows you to check for all open ports and running services. It not only checks if the port is open, but also sends a request and checks whether a reply meets specific criteria. It can also discover some Trojans and spyware.

Those are only two of the many different features of this program. Once the 30-day free trial expires, most of the features still work. The few that are “locked out” are good… but not the only ones that can help you. The ones that are part of the free application are definitely worth having in your tool box.

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How to Troubleshoot your Network

Chris Pirillo » homenetwork

How to Troubleshoot your Network