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Lab 1 Basic Network Troubleshooting

This document provides exercises to help students learn basic network troubleshooting tools and techniques. It includes instructions on how to use commands like ipconfig, ping, traceroute, arp, netstat, nslookup, and others to test and understand network connectivity and configurations. Students are asked to run the commands, analyze the outputs, and answer questions to demonstrate their understanding.

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Michael O Sullivan
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411 views

Lab 1 Basic Network Troubleshooting

This document provides exercises to help students learn basic network troubleshooting tools and techniques. It includes instructions on how to use commands like ipconfig, ping, traceroute, arp, netstat, nslookup, and others to test and understand network connectivity and configurations. Students are asked to run the commands, analyze the outputs, and answer questions to demonstrate their understanding.

Uploaded by

Michael O Sullivan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Basic Network Troubleshooting

ipconfig
Run the ipconfig /all command.

Exercise 1
Write down and explain the following for your PC:
1. Hostname
2. IP address
3. Hardware address
4. Subnet mask
5. Default gateway
6. DNS server
7. DHCP server

TCP/IP Settings
1. Open the LAN connection in the Network Connections from the Control Panel.
2. Select the properties item.
3. View the TCP/IP settings.
4. Make sure to cancel when quitting this window and do not make any changes to
the settings.

Exercise 2
Does the pc have a static or dynamic IP address?
Where does the pc get this address from?

PING
Ping is a debugging tool used to check if a given host is alive. It sends ICMP echo
request messages to a specified destination. Any machine that receives an echo
request formulates an echo reply and returns it to the original user. The request
contains an optional data area; the reply contains a copy of the data sent in the
request. Sophisticated versions of ping send a series of ICMP echo requests, capture
responses, and provide statistics about datagram loss.

Exercise 3
Go to the Dos prompt.
Type ping hostname. (Specify a valid hostname or IP address)
Do this for a machine within the lab and for some machine external to the lab.
Explain the results returned from the application. Take note of response times within
the LAN and for Internet traffic. Investigate the different options that can be used
with ping. Type ping -? to get a list of options.

traceroute
Traceroute is a utility that records the route (the specific gateway computers at each
hop) through the Internet between your computer and a specified destination
computer. It also calculates and displays the amount of time each hop took. Traceroute
is a handy tool both for understanding where problems are in the Internet network and
for getting a detailed sense of the Internet itself.

Computer Networks Practical Gene Farrell, ITT 1


Exercise 4
Go to the Dos prompt.
Type tracert hostname. (Specify a valid hostname or IP address)
Do the above for www.ittralee.ie.

Repeat the process for some machine external to the college (e.g. www.afl.com.au).
In both cases answer the following:
1. How many hops did it take to get to the destination.
2. List the nodes the packet passes through on its path.
3. Explain any problems that occurred.
Note: If no external traceroute available in lab, do a search on web to find one. E.g.
www.all-nettools.com / network-tools.com .
Use the whois database at the appropriate registries to find out what networks your
packet passes en route www.ripe.net, www.arin.net, etc.

Exercise 5
Modify the TTL field in the IP packet carrying a ping: ping i 4 www.rte.ie Explain
the results. Use traceroute to illustrate your answer.

ARP
The Address Resolution Protocol is used by a sending host when it knows the IP
address of the destination but needs the hardware address. Is a low-level protocol that
hides the underlying network physical addressing, permitting us to assign IP addresses
of our choosing to every machine. ARP is a broadcast protocol - every host on the
network receives the request. Does not require maintenance of a centralised database.
ARP does not need to be done every time an IP datagram is sent - to reduce
communication costs, hosts that use ARP maintain a cache of recently acquired IP-to-
physical address mappings. Whenever a host receives an ARP reply, it saves the
machines IP address and corresponding hardware address in its cache for successive
lookups. When transmitting a packet, the host always looks in its cache for a binding
before sending an ARP request.
It is possible to see the ARP cache on the local machine by typing arp a at the Dos
prompt. This will display a table of IP-to-physical address bindings. Can create a
static entry by typing arp s.

Exercise 5
Go to the Dos prompt.
Type arp a
1. List the contents of the ARP cache.
Try pinging a machine in the lab.
Type arp a
2. Are there any new entries in the ARP cache?
3. If so, explain how the entries got there.
Continue to type arp a for a couple of minutes.
4. What happens to the ARP cache? Do any entries disappear?
5. If so, explain why.
6. Are there any entries in the cache that seem to be there all the time? Explain.

Computer Networks Practical Gene Farrell, ITT 2


Netstat
Displays protocol statistics and shows all TCP/IP sockets in use for all clients and
servers.

NETSTAT [-a] [-e] [-n] [-s] [-p proto] [-r] [interval]


-a Displays all connections and listening ports.
-e Displays Ethernet statistics. This may be combined with the -s
option.
-n Displays addresses and port numbers in numerical form.
-p proto Shows connections for the protocol specified by proto; proto
may be TCP or UDP. If used with the -s option to display
per-protocol statistics, proto may be TCP, UDP, or IP.
-r Displays the routing table.
-s Displays per-protocol statistics. By default, statistics are
shown for TCP, UDP and IP; the -p option may be used to specify
a subset of the default.
interval Redisplays selected statistics, pausing interval seconds
between each display. Press CTRL+C to stop redisplaying
statistics. If omitted, netstat will print the current
configuration information once.

Exercise 6
Run the netstat command and explain the results you receive.

Exercise 7
Use the nslookup command to carry out interactive DNS lookups.
Usage: nslookup hostname
What is the IP address of the CIT webserver, www.cit.ie?

Exercise 8
Test the following commands and explain what they are used for:
1. hostname
2. route print / netstat -r
3. route add
4. net share Lists all Windows shares that are available on this machine.
5. pathping hostname tracert is similar but PathPing also provides packet
loss percentages. PathPing displays a path to a TCP/IP host and reports
packet losses at each router along the way.

Computer Networks Practical Gene Farrell, ITT 3

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