Networking All-in-One For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 7: Verifying Your Network Installation

In This Chapter

Checking the network configuration settings

Pinging yourself and others

Making sure that you can log on

Verifying mapped drives and checking network printers

You’ve installed all the network cards, plugged in all the cables, and configured all the software. One task remains, however, before you can declare your network finished: You must verify that the network works as expected.

Verifying a network isn’t difficult. All you have to do is make sure that users can log on and access the network resources they need. If everything works the way it should, you can declare victory, give yourself a high five, and take the afternoon off. If not, you have to do some troubleshooting to determine the source of the problem.

In this short chapter, I describe some of the tests that you should perform to make sure that your network is functioning. Along the way, I suggest a few of the most common problems that may interrupt the network. The focus of this chapter, however, is on verifying that your network is functioning — not on troubleshooting ...