It is also crucial to have some best practices in place to make troubleshooting as speedy and PAINLESS as possible. Following these best network troubleshooting practices as you strive to resolve network issues will help speed up the process and minimise superfluous or repeating efforts.

• Gather facts about network and network problems: To PROVIDE the greatest help to your end consumers, you must first determine what the issue is. Collect enough information from the people who are having network problems as well as the network itself to be able to duplicate or diagnose the problem. Take cautious not to confuse symptoms with the core cause, as what appears to be a problem may be a symptom of a greater problem.
• Logs can be customised: Make sure your event and security logs are set up to provide you with the information you need to troubleshoot and analyse the root cause. Each log should provide a clear explanation of the items or events being tracked, as well as the date and time, as well as information about the report's source (MAC or IP address).
• Examine security and access: Check that no access or security concerns have arisen by ensuring that all access permissions are as they should be and that no one has tampered with a sensitive section of the network they weren't meant to. Check that any firewalls, antivirus, and malware software are up to date and that no security concerns are interfering with your users' ability to operate.
• Adhere to an escalation protocol: There's nothing more irritating than going to the IT help desk and getting routed to someone else, who then directs you to someone else, who then refers you to someone else, and so on. Establish a clear escalation system that identifies who is responsible for certain concerns, as well as the last person in the chain who can be contacted for assistance. All of your end customers should KNOW who to contact if they have a problem, so they don't waste time talking to five different people who can't help them.
• Using monitoring tools: Manual troubleshooting is possible, however, it can take a long time if you go through each step. It might be stressful to try to locate the problem, let alone remedy it when you have a SLEW of individuals banging on your office door or sending you frantic emails. It's best to employ monitoring tools in commercial and corporate circumstances to ensure you're obtaining all of the relevant network information and aren't missing anything crucial, not to mention avoiding exposing the firm to excessive danger.

SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is my preferred monitoring software . It's a well-designed application with capabilities that help you debug network issues quickly and THOROUGHLY. NetPath network path analysis, which shows your network topology and performance pathways, and PerfStack, which enables you to compare multiple performance measures against each other as well as historical data, are two more NPM capabilities. You can use these tools to see which performance issues are linked and troubleshoot the root cause more quickly.