With today’s dynamic digital landscape getting increasingly interconnected, businesses now lean toward securing their network infrastructure as a bedrock of operational success. Ensuring your network is protected, well-maintained, and always up is vital for sustained productivity.
That said, the significance of regular network maintenance and effective troubleshooting techniques cannot be overstated. It ensures you can proactively mitigate potential issues and optimise network performance, thereby fortifying your security posture.
In this article, we will dig deeper into the details of network maintenance and troubleshooting.
What is Network Maintenance?
Network maintenance refers to the process of regularly inspecting, upgrading, and managing a network infrastructure to ensure all the systems connected to it are always up and running and performing optimally.
It includes a range of tasks:
- Troubleshooting network problems.
- Hardware and software installation/configuration.
- Monitoring and optimising network performance.
- Ensuring backup verification
- Execuituning network traffic analysis
- Conducting security audit
Importance of Network Maintenance
Regular maintenance of your network ensures you are ahead of the competition and makes your network perform optimally. In addition, you can track down any potential security loopholes in advance, thus taking proactive measures to mitigate them before they escalate into hefty operational disruptions.
In addition, ensuring your network loads faster and minimising the possibility of system failure ensures your business is highly productive. Thus, you can improve your business productivity and keep revenue rolling in the business.
In short, a fast and secure network infrastructure helps build a productive working environment, allowing employees to focus on what they are best at.
Network Troubleshooting: An Integral Part of Network Maintenance
Network troubleshooting is the systematic approach to tracking down and addressing issues in the systems operating on a network. A key element of the network maintenance process, troubleshooting ensures your network operates optimally by enabling you to immediately address problems that can result in a compromise of the system’s security, connectivity, and performance.
IT experts often use different troubleshooting techniques to dig into the root cause behind a network issue, implement proactive solutions, and restore the system operations as soon as possible. The result is minimal unplanned downtimes, maximum network reliability, and enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) for users.
Common Network Issues to Troubleshoot
Network Congestion
Network congestion occurs when traffic overloads a network, surpassing its capacity. It can result in a delay in query, packet loss, and blockage of new connections due to a drop in quality of service (QOS). Network congestion can be led by a range of factors: over-used devices, unneeded traffic flow, security attacks, antiquated hardware, faulty devices, etc.
Faulty Network Configuration
It refers to the inaccurate setting of applications and devices in a network infrastructure that impedes optimal network performance. Proper configuration ensures you can immediately replace the functionality of a network component after facing an operational disruption.
Subnet masks, Wrong IP addressing, incorrect gateway setting, and inaccurate DNS configurations can result in faulty network configuration. Sluggish network performance, network inaccessibility, etc., can be the issue resulting from faulty network configuration.
IP Address Conflict
This issue arises when two devices are assigned to the same IP address. For uninterrupted network connectivity and communication, all devices in a network should have identical IP addresses. Assigning two devices the same IP address can hinder one or both devices from accessing the internet and network resources, making manual intervention necessary.
Network Security Breaches
/outdated systems or unpatched software in a network act as a common entry point for scammers to intrude on your system and break your security defence. These may include unauthorised access to the network, data theft, malware injection, etc.
DNS Resolution Problem
DNS (Domain Name System) resolution refers to the problem of translating domain names to their unique IP addresses. It makes websites inaccessible to the users even if they are operational. Factors leading to DNS resolution problems are DNS server problems, setting misconfiguration, network connectivity issues, inconsistent DNS cache, etc.
That said, factors such as sudden surges in bandwidth use, in-app configuration changes, and security loopholes can result in the aforementioned network issues.
Network Troubleshooting Steps
Before you try to address any network issue, make sure you have in-depth insight into the network protocols, configurations, and the implemented technologies. In addition, make sure you pinpoint the reasons behind the issue, whom it affects, and the aftermath.
Follow the steps to ensure you can identify and troubleshoot any network issue efficiently:
Identify the Problem
Start off with documenting the symptoms, pinpointing the affected systems, and conducting a thorough assessment of the scope of the issues to ensure you take a structured approach to troubleshooting. Follow the steps to confirm whether it’s an external or internal connectivity problem:
- Check Hardware: Before you go any further, make sure all the wires and switches in your network are connected just right, and the network is up and working. This is because a loose connection and faulty hardware are the most common reasons behind a network issue. The next step is to turn on and off the network. It may seem simplistic, but most network issues are solved with this step.
- Use ipconfig: Use the ipconfig command to check whether your computer is assigned to a unique and validated IP address. If you need a new IP for your network, type ipconfig /release and then ipconfig /renew. It will help troubleshoot issues with your IP address.
- Do a ping test: To track down any connectivity issue in your internet connection or within your network, do a ping test by sending a ping to both the external network and the router.
- Perform a DNS Check: A DNS check is a process of validating proper functionality and configuration of the settings for a domain. It involves checking DNS records, validating DNS resolution, name server, and monitoring DNS changes.
- Check Malware Protection: Make sure your network is protected from any malware injection by keeping your malware protection system always updated.
- Check Database Logs: Keep checking and reviewing your database logs to ensure there are no errors, inconsistencies, or anomalies that can affect network performance.
Find Out the Cause
Conduct a thorough analysis of the data gathered in step one to find out the probable cause of the network issue. It’s critical to consider the recent changes in your account, such as software installation, and potential security threats that could lead to network malfunctioning.
Establish a Strategy
Before you curate a strategy, make sure you validate the cause of the network malfunction you established. The next step is to outline a comprehensive strategy and devise a roadmap to address the root cause.
Implement the Solution
Next up, implement your devised plan and ensure no new complications arise during this strategy execution step. Throughout the process, enable continuous monitoring to track the progress and check whether the outcome is on par with the expected result.
Once you have applied the fix, conduct rigorous system testing to ensure it is fully functional.
Document the Process
Upon troubleshooting the issue successfully, the identified symptoms, the diagnosed root cause, and the steps of troubleshooting should be decommissioned. Detailed documentation would act as a future reference and a roadmap to tackling any potential issues before they cause you to face serious repercussions.
Network Troubleshooting Best Practices
Effective network troubleshooting is vital to ensure your network is secured and performing at its best. For optimal network performance, follow the following tips.
- Take a systematic and data-driven approach to problem-solving. Adopting a process of elimination helps you strategically narrow down your list of potential causes of the network issue.
- try to collect and consolidate as much information about the issue as you can. Information such as the most prevalent network issue affecting users, what type of user base is being affected the most, etc., can help you identify the network issue faster and more efficiently.
- Stay current with the latest technologies that can make your network infrastructure highly resilient and augmented.
- Follow the escalation framework to better comprehend the network issue better. Thus, your network administrator can find the most efficient and appropriate user base or team to collaborate with and find the root cause more effectively.
- Leverage Network Monitoring Tools: For automated trackdown and troubleshooting of network issues, cashing in on an advanced network monitoring tool can be the most viable solution. With these tools, your network engineers can get all the required information about an issue at your fingertip and troubleshoot before it can cause massive operational disruptions.
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