Windows XP and Windows Vista includes many tools that will allow you to test your LAN and your Internet connection to detect problems. The command used to diagnose network problems is the ping command. It can test the connectivity of a remote computer by sending packets of data.
The tracert command in turn determines the route leading to a destination. You can find every piece of equipment that sits between your computer and the destination you specify.
The ipconfig command will display the values of the current configuration of your TCP / IP, and update their parameters by DHCP and DNS.
Finally, in addition to these commands, other tools are included in Windows to help you better understand your network environment and give you leads in solving your problems: ARP, netsh, netstat, net ...
Ping:
The command used to diagnose network problems is the ping command. It can test the connectivity of a remote computer by sending ICMP echo packets. If the computer responds to ping, is that it is reachable and, therefore, that your network has no problems physically.
Thus to check that your LAN is set up, you simply "ping" each computer and see if they respond.
Suppose you have two PC network, a first IP address 192.168.1.12 and a second IP address 192.168.1.108.
- To test the network connection between two PCs, go on the first PC, then click the Start button and then click Run.
- Enter cmd, and then confirm by pressing Enter.
- A command prompt window opens. Then enter the following command: ping 192.168.1.108 and press the Enter key.
- Your computer will then send a series of packets to the IP address 192.168.1.108. If these packages arrive its destination, you get a response from the remote computer. The time it takes for packets to get back to you is also indicated, this is called latency.
- If, however, these packages are not the addressee, which means a misconfigured network, you get the message "host unreachable destination" or "Timeout exceeded demand. In this case, check your network configuration.
- To verify that the Internet is functional, you can perform a ping on a network server, such as the Google search engine. Now enter the command ping www.google.com, then confirm with Enter. Note the absence of the prefix http://.
In case of failure, also test the IP address of a server Google pinging 209.85.135.109. If you are still unable to reach the destination host is your Internet connection is not active.
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