- Digital Volt Meter (DVM)
- another name is a Volt /Ohm Meter
- checks for resistance on cables, terminators and barrel connectors
- cables and barrel connectors should provide 0 resistance
- terminators in 10Base2 and 10Base5 networks should provide 50 ohms of resistance
- Use as a continuity checker for cables.
- a continuity check can reveal a short where:
- two parts of the same cable are exposed and touching
- part of cable is touching another conductor such as metal surface
- Time-Domain Reflectometer (TDR)
- Sends sonar-like pulses down the cable to identify any kind of a break, short or imperfection that might affect performance
- can locate a break within a few feet of the actual separation in the cable
- Advanced Cable Testers
- Work at OSI layers 2, 3, and 4 and can display more complex information.
- can indicate if a particular cable or NIC is causing problems
- Can display:
- Message and error frame counts
- Excess collisions
- congestion errors
- beaconing
- Oscilloscopes
- measures signal voltage per unit of time
- Can identify
- breaks,
- shorts,
- bends
- opens (breaks in the cable)
- and attenuation data.
- Network Monitors
- Software that tracks all or part of network traffic.
- Protocol Analyzers
- Can perform packet capture, decoding and transmission in real-time.
- Most useful network analysis tool.
- They look inside the packet to identify problems
- They have a TDR in them
- they can
- identify the most active computers
- identify computers sending error-filled packets
- identify, view and filter certain types of packets
- help analyze network trends
- check various components, connections by generating test packets
- set up alerts like Performance Monitor
Support Resources
- Microsoft TechNet
- BBS's
- User Groups
- Periodicals
- Internet
- Microsoft Network
Common Troubleshooting Situations
- Cable and other physical layer problems.
- Power fluctuations.
- Upgrades
- Changes in client computer configuration.
- Server crashes.
- Poor network performance resulting from some change or user application.
No comments:
Post a Comment