Network Troubleshooting Tools

Troubleshooting network problems effectively requires several steps. To start, you need a way to understand and monitor your network, which means you’ll want a way to visualize your network paths. The current devices, applications, and individual users within your network should be discovered using a continuously updated network monitoring system with scanning features. Using monitoring software, you can detect on-site devices and nodes operating in the cloud or in a hybrid environment.

To gain a complete understanding of your network and its paths, your network troubleshooting software should also provide concise network and path analysis. Additionally, the tool should offer connectivity monitoring to help you get an up-to-date understanding of your network infrastructure. Network connectivity monitoring can be the first step in flagging a traffic slowdown in your network.

The next step in network troubleshooting is to analyze your network traffic patterns. Data collected with a network troubleshooting tool can allow you to visualize the bandwidth of individual users. Whenever your network experiences a dip in QoS, network troubleshooting tools can flag issues using custom alerts.

Network troubleshooting tools can provide automation and reliability to your network management process. There are many potential reasons for network slowdown and decreased quality of service. Network troubleshooting software monitors performance metrics from every node to isolate the source of the problem by measuring factors like network latency, route flapping, and capacity trends.

Improper configuration can be a major source of poor network performance. Network configuration issues can lead to long communication times if your network devices are assigned to ports not reflective of their communication patterns. An automated network configuration tool like SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is designed to offer 24/7 monitoring of configuration arrangements. NCM pairs configuration reporting with automated backup of your routers, controllers, and switch configurations, so you can return to historical configuration archives to pinpoint the root of the problem.

Network troubleshooting tools address more than just network configuration. Another critical metric for network troubleshooting is network latency, which NPM tracks at the packet level. Comprehensive network troubleshooting software will also monitor other metrics, including network connectivity, interface downtime, route flapping, capacity (with forecasting), and more.

Network troubleshooting tools are built to compile detailed analytics and real-time monitoring to provide IT managers with a holistic picture of network operations. With alerts and recommendations, these tools can guide IT managers to the most urgent problem spots.

SolarWinds Network Performance Manager and Network Configuration Manager, when used together, can cover the bases of a comprehensive network troubleshooting operation. Performance metrics from NPM and NCM are both integrated into the Orion^® Web Console for low-overhead operations, with high-level network management through a single pane of glass.

NPM and NCM can allow IT managers to manage complex infrastructures and multi-vendor networks, ensuring effective management for even large, diverse networks. With interactive charts, color-coded graphical analysis, and an easy-to-use web interface, keeping track of network operations can be easier through an intuitive dashboard.

For users within a Cisco network environment, SolarWinds NPM and NCM have the added benefit of integration with the National Vulnerability Database, which can help you identify security vulnerabilities among Cisco devices in your network.

Troubleshooting network issues using NPM is designed to by simple by having an alert notify you of node problems. In NPM, many alerts are enabled by default, including the Node Down alert. So, if a node goes down, the automated network troubleshooting tool in NPM can immediately alert you if the node doesn’t respond to a ping. These notifications can be found in the Active Alerts widget on the Home page. Down nodes in widgets either appear as red, which means they’re down, or yellow, a warning for notes in danger.

Additionally, if you’ve enabled the network troubleshooting software alerts in NPM to send an email about node and interface problems, you get an email when a node goes down. To see problems, simply click My Dashboards, Network, and Network Top 10. The widgets on this page help identify nodes that respond to a ping but have other health problems.

After finding a node with a problem, click the node name in any widget to open the Node Details page. If a node appears in red and is down, it hasn’t responded to a ping. To troubleshoot network issues of this severity, first check the power to make sure it’s plugged in. Next, check the LAN link light. Is it connected to the network?

If neither of these is the cause of the issue, log in to the device to begin troubleshooting. Send a ping. If a node responds but continues to show indicators of health or performance issues, use the information on the Node Details page to help further troubleshoot. Some possible areas to investigate include the following: response time, packet loss, CPU load, and memory utilization widgets. Often, statistics around these areas are the initial indicators of a problem.

From there, you can use the Network Latency and Packet Loss and the Min/Max/Average Response Time charts to see if this is a momentary problem or a continuing issue. Additionally, depending on what type of node you’re monitoring, there are additional, device-specific widgets. For example, the hardware health node offers reports on physical elements of the hardware for Cisco, Dell, F5, HP, and Juniper.

When troubleshooting issues involving routers and switches, multiple widgets can show a variety of route-related data. Look under the Network subview for these widgets, checking for information about Routing Neighbors, Routing Table, or Default Route Changes.

Finally, when interface and node problems trigger your alerts, you can get more details about the alerts using the Node Details page in the Alerts for this Node widget. Just click the alert name, which sends you to the Alert Details page. You can use the widgets on this page to better understand which issues caused the alert.

When bandwidth issues are already ruled out, use the network troubleshooting tool in NPM to look for other issues potentially slowing down bandwidth.

You can use SolarWinds NPM to get even deeper insights and analyze the performance metrics of your network. Go to My Dashboards, click Home, and click Performance Analysis. From there, click Add Entities, add the node to the Metric Palette, and select the node. Expand the Response Time History metric group, then drag Average Response Time and Packet Loss to a new chart.

To troubleshoot network issues with the load, add Average CPU Load and Average Percent Memory metrics to a new graph. Add the memory load in percent to be able to compare the two metrics.

Investigate whether it’s a buffer issue by adding the Total Number of Buffer Misses to a new graph. Additionally, to find issues caused by a lack of RAM, add Buffer Misses due to No RAM to the Buffer Misses chart. To investigate the buffer misses, add metrics for all types of buffer misses into a new graph.

Finally, you may share the dashboard by simply sharing the URL. The URL will provide the data to recreate the view. And to store the featured metrics in the dashboard for further investigation, click Save and enter a name for the Performance Analysis project. After the data is saved, you can click Load to view the project again.

SolarWinds Network Performance Manager uses NetPath^™ and PerfStack features to automate the network performance troubleshooting process.

NetPath is designed to provide a detailed map of packet routes, with innovative visualization of your network performance. NetPath can act as a more evolved traceroute tool, providing granular details of packet transmission at each node to allow you to gain deeper insights into critical network paths across your devices, applications, networks, and vendors. If there’s high packet latency, NetPath can allow you to understand the source of inefficient transmission and the potential hang-ups your packets may experience at each step along the way. NetPath also includes in-depth analysis of historical data paths, showing the time interval of your choice.

PerfStack is another troubleshooting feature of the robust network troubleshooting operations in NPM by supporting cross-stack correlation with other integrated SolarWinds products. The complexity of your network can make it difficult to pinpoint the source of packet latency, especially when multiple issues are simultaneously contributing to poor end-user experience. PerfStack is a set of dashboards designed for IT troubleshooting. With detailed visual data correlation, PerfStack can let IT managers view large amounts of historical and real-time metrics from each of your network nodes, whether they’re on-premises or in the cloud.

Network Configuration Manager includes customizable config templates and change commands. Combined with detailed network configuration monitoring, NCM is designed to solve for having to manually update configuration when a new device is added or removed or when port switches are reorganized. With NCM, each node in your network infrastructure can be updated with machine-based automation and precision.

NCM can also perform an inventory scan to collect updated details on each of your discoverable nodes. The tool’s scanning capability can detect serial numbers, port details, IP addresses, vendor information, end-of-life and end-of-service dates, and more.

IT managers experienced in network configuration management can benefit from the user-friendly configuration change templates in NCM, which is built to allow IT managers to easily execute configuration change commands. With NCM, you can create, manage, and streamline config change templates. You can also easily execute custom command scripts on nodes and gain inspiration from sample command scripts with variables. Config change templates in NCM use CLI commands to realize configuration tasks you may need to finish your network troubleshooting. You can also import and edit existing config change templates, export NCM config change templates, and delete templates when necessary.