| Network Troubleshooting Tools helps you sort through the thousands of tools that
have been developed for debugging TCP/IP networks and choose the ones that are
best for your needs. It also shows you how to approach network troubleshooting using
these tools, how to document your network so you know how it behaves under normal
conditions, and how to think about problems when they arise so you can solve them
more effectively.
This book is not a general introduction to network troubleshooting. Rather, it is about one aspect of
troubleshooting—information collection. This book is a tutorial introduction to tools and techniques
for collecting information about computer networks. It should be particularly useful when dealing
with network problems, but the tools and techniques it describes are not limited to troubleshooting.
Many can and should be used on a regular basis regardless of whether you are having problems.
Some of the tools I have selected may be a bit surprising to many. I strongly believe that the best
approach to troubleshooting is to be proactive, and the tools I discuss reflect this belief. Basically, if
you don't understand how your network works before you have problems, you will find it very
difficult to diagnose problems when they occur. Many of the tools described here should be used
before you have problems. As such, these tools could just as easily be classified as network
management or network performance analysis tools.
This book does not attempt to catalog every possible tool. There are simply too many tools already
available, and the number is growing too rapidly. Rather, this book focuses on the tools that I believe
are the most useful, a collection that should help in dealing with almost any problem you see. I have
tried to include pointers to other relevant tools when there wasn't space to discuss them. In many cases,
I have described more than one tool for a particular job. It is extremely rare for two tools to have
exactly the same features. One tool may be more useful than another, depending on circumstances.
And, because of the differences in operating systems, a specific tool may not be available on every
system. It is worth knowing the alternatives. |
