How to Troubleshoot WAN

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Make sure that the network card’s settings are correct on each computer.
• Make sure that the cables on the routers are tightly plugged.
• Turn off your router for almost 30 seconds after it turn it on again.
• Ping the WAN IP address of the remote router.
• Ensure that all the network devices such as router, switch and CSU/DSU are
turned on and working on the both ends.
 • Apply local loop testing, framing, clocking, signaling and signal encoding
techniques.
• Check the bandwidth allocation and see how much bandwidth is allocated to
each remote site.
• 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.
• Check if someone is sending large chunks of data.
• Check to see that if there is a malfunctioning in the remote routers/switches or
centralized router/switches.
• Make sure that is there NIC problem on a computer.
• Make sure the firewall software or hardware is configured correctly.

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.