Troubleshooting and monitoring the performance of the WAN-enabled applications and hardware is an emerging business. There are many products and solutions are available to accommodate the requirements of the enterprises and small businesses. WAN links are usually built up through the dial up connections, dedicated connections, circuit switching and packet switching and other WAN technologies. The basic troubleshooting for every kind of network is done through the free utility that is built in every TCP/IP stack. The first step in troubleshooting is to use the “PING” command.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

Go to run > type CMD > press enter > go to command prompt and at the command prompt type ping [IP address] where the IP address is the 32 bit numeric address of the destination computer like 10.11.10.1.

If you get the reply from the remote computer this means the physical connectivity between the two computers or devices is okay and if get the error message like this “Request Time Out” this means there is some problem in the physical connectivity.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

The common troubleshooting problems are associated with the faulty network devices such as LAN card, router, switch, misconfigured router, misconfigured firewall, too many simultaneous connections, server crash down, network congestions and inadequate bandwidth problems.

Isolating the root cause of the WAN problems is very important and this can be done by using the right troubleshooting tools. Using the right tools and managed services are important for isolating the problem. The tools can help to determine whether the root cause of the problem lies carrier network infrastructure (telecommunication companies, network applications or on a switch, firewall or router or it just due to the human error.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

The technologies and products that are used in troubleshooting and optimizing the WAN performance are rapidly evolving. While troubleshooting the problems it is important to dissect the components of a WAN circuit.

Following are some basic tips that can help you in determining and isolating the problems in your WAN network.

1)Make sure that the network card’s settings are correct on each computer.

2)Make sure that the cables on the routers are tightly plugged.

3)Turn off your router for almost 30 seconds after it turn it on again.

How to Troubleshoot WAN

4)Ping the WAN IP address of the remote router.

5)Ensure that all the network devices such as router, switch and CSU/DSU are turned on and working on the both ends.

6)Apply local loop testing, framing, clocking, signaling and signal encoding techniques.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

7)Check the bandwidth allocation and see how much bandwidth is allocated to each remote site.

8)With the help of right WAN troubleshooting tool check if it is a legitimate WAN problem, network congestion due to the distributed application or bandwidth problem.

9)Check if someone is sending large chunks of data.

How to Troubleshoot WAN

10)Check to see that if there is a malfunctioning in the remote routers/switches or centralized router/switches.

11)Make sure that is there NIC problem on a computer.

12)Make sure the firewall software or hardware is configured correctly.

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A.Rajesh Khanna

Troubleshooting/Monitoring Tools

Report Analyzer
SuperAgent
Netflow Tracker
Net Watch
Net Where
Net Voyant
Response Watch
Optiview

By using the right WAN Management/Monitoring and Troubleshooting tool it would be very easy to isolate and troubleshoot the problem.

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A.Rajesh Khanna