For all my troubleshooting network friends, I have compiled a list below of the top software-based network troubleshooting tools that you need to have and know. It you want to add hardware to your toolkit – have a look at our “Go Bag“
#1A – Our Network Troubleshooting Toolkit for Windows or Linux
You will find more details on this right here. A must have. Usage instructions are here. Most of the items below are embedded in this tool.
#1B – Wireshark
There is so much to know about this – you can read more on this site here including articles and how to’s. Dig in!
#2 – The Win-Fi WLAN Wi-Fi scanner
You will find more details here, and again it is a must have.
#3 – The IP Scanner
Who is on my network? You can read about this here and here. There are many options in those articles – but perhaps the quickest if you are a Windows user is the Advanced IP Scanner.
#4 – Speed Testing
Regardless of what I think about speed tests (you read about his here), this is probably the most popular https://www.speedtest.net
#5 – IPv4 Subnet Calculation
As required in all certification programs – this is a mandatory skill, but you do not need a certification to know how to do it. There are online tools and you can learn to do this easily by hand.
#6 – A Terminal / remote console
The best and simplest of these is PuTTY – you can find it here. Another option is Tera Term, and you can find that here.
#7 – The Netstat Tool
I include this is my Networking Toolkit for Windows. You can read more about this built-in tool here.
#8 – The Whois Tool
Sometimes we need to know who owns a domain name or a range of public IP space. Whois will give us details about who has registered a particular domain name and often includes contact details for the registrar. Finding out who owns a range of IP space can help us determine where odd traffic on our network is coming from. While Windows 11 does not have the tool by default, it can be installed here. I prefer just to use a web site like this one.
#9 – The NS Lookup Tool
This is built into every operating system. It is the Name Server lookup tool. Just open a command line or terminal and enter ‘nslookup’ and you are there. I have included this in my toolkit.
#10 – The IPconfig and ifconfig Tools
These are in Windows and Linux/MAC Os respectively. They will display IP address(es) of the host that we’re working on, these are the utilities to use. Not only will it provide IPv4 information, but it will also provide IPv6 addresses, MAC addresses, DNS servers, default gateways and data with regard to how much traffic is flowing over the interface along with errors and dropped packets. These are included in my Toolkit as well.
#11 – The Traceroute and Tracert Tools
What path did my data follow to reach a particular destination? These tools will answer this question. The tools are built into the operating system ad executable from the command line. Read more here. We have a bunch of articles on Tracerouting – see them here.
#12 – The Ping Tool
Ping is a Echo Request/Echo Reply pair of ICMP messages. It helps us to determine two things: latency and packet loss. You can read more here.
I hope this list helps you to troubleshoot networks.
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