7.4. Troubleshooting Network Connectivity Problems

The symptoms a user may see and report when a computer has connectivity problems can be wild and varied: "the server is down," "email doesn't work," or "this program doesn't work." When troubleshooting connectivity, you need to go back to basics.

Basic network troubleshooting often starts with using the IPConfig command to check TCP/IP configuration and continues with the Ping command to check connectivity. IPConfig was discussed in greater depth earlier in this chapter, but remember, you can determine several valuable pieces of information using IPConfig when troubleshooting, including the following:

IP address and subnet mask

An address of 169.254.y.z. should jump right out at you as an APIPA ...

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