A+ Certification / Beginners

Troubleshooting with TCP/IP Utilities

After you have TCP/IP installed and configured and you have your TCP/IP network running, it is important to be able to troubleshoot the network. When problems arise on a Windows network, you can use some of the following commands to do your troubleshooting:

  • IPCONFIG
  • PING
  • TRACERT
  • NBTSTAT
  • NETSTAT
  • PATHPING
  • NSLOOKUP

The following sections discuss these popular TCP/IP utilities that are used to troubleshoot TCP/IP connectivity.

IPCONFIG

If you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP desktops, you can run the ipconfig (IP Configuration) utility, which shows you the current TCP/IP configuration of the Windows desktop, such as the IP address, the subnet mask, and the default gateway. If the computer is a DHCP client, ipconfig identifies the server that has given the IP address and also shows how long the IP address will be used by the client. Table below shows some of the switches supported by the utility ipconfig.exe.

IPCONFIG Switches
SwitchDescription
/?Shows a list of switches supported by ipconfig.exe and a brief description of each switch.
/allShows all TCP/IP information - for example, DHCP lease period and the DNS server.
/releaseReleases the current IP address information assigned by the DHCP server.
/renewRequests new IP address information from the DHCP server.

For example, to use the ipconfig utility and view just the basic TCP/IP settings, you type the following at a command prompt:

ipconfig

But to view all the TCP/IP settings, such as your MAC address or the IP address of your DNS server, DHCP server, and WINS server, use the ipconfig /all command. You may also view when your lease time is up for the address you have been assigned when you use the /all switch on ipconfig.

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In this tutorial:

  1. Networking the Operating System
  2. Understanding Networking Components
  3. Installing a network adapter in Windows 2000/XP/2003
  4. Network client
  5. Protocols
  6. IPX/SPX
  7. Services
  8. The TCP/IP Protocol
  9. Subnet mask
  10. Default gateway
  11. Configuring TCP/IP en masse using DHCP
  12. Understanding Name Resolution
  13. WINS
  14. The LMHOSTS file
  15. The HOSTS file
  16. Troubleshooting with TCP/IP Utilities
  17. PING
  18. TRACERT
  19. NETSTAT
  20. Sharing File System Resources
  21. Enabling File and Printer Sharing in Windows 2000/XP/2003
  22. Sharing a folder in Windows XP
  23. Hidden shares
  24. Using a UNC path
  25. Sharing Printer Resources
  26. Understanding Windows Services
  27. Browser service