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10 Networking Troubleshooting Tools To Try Today

Forbes Technology Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Forbes Technology Council

Network problems are issues that everyone has from time to time. It can get annoying when it happens but it is a part of our connected world. Fortunately, there are tools available that make it easier to diagnose and troubleshoot these kinds of problems so that our work can resume.

We asked members of the Forbes Technology Council for recommendations on network troubleshooting tools. If you're looking for a better tool, consider these options.

1. Pingdom

Is a networking issue a problem for everyone or just me? Sometimes that question is difficult to answer without additional infrastructure. With a global footprint, Pingdom can more easily figure out which end of the connection is having issues. Their paid website monitoring is great, but they also offer an excellent and free DNS health check. - Matthew KolbHomeArea.com

2. Nmap
The fundamental reason one would utilizing Nmap is so that one could perform observation over an objective system. Nmap empowers bypassing firewalls or IDS, filters for OS vulnerabilities, gives the capacity to send organized packets of information to target frameworks, checks an IP range and performs quick DNS queries. It additionally has the ability to coordinate with Zenmap GUI for visualizations. - Rohan Pinto1Kosmos BlockID
3. Tcpdump
Tcpdump is much faster than its competition. And although it doesn't have as many features, it is much easier to use the tool and it does the job effectively.  - Brent ChapmanRoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corporation
4. Chrome Network Monitor
The network panel gives a detailed view into the resources that are requested and downloaded over the network in real-time. It isn't very pleasing, but performance is imperative as traffic increases. Identifying and fixing requests that take a long time to complete is an important step in optimizing a site. - Venkat MalladiVymo
5. Wireshark
When hitting local network problems, simple tools aren't always enough. When you actually need to look at the specific packets that are coming in to see what traffic is or isn't flowing through your various network interfaces, Wireshark is a great tool to get the full picture of what's going on. Best of all, it's free! - David Isaac MurrayDoctor.com
6. Traceroute And Dig
Traceroute will give you the paths from your current internet location to the destination and everything in between. We use Dig to "dig up" information on load balancers, especially being hosted under Amazon. From there we know what temporary IPs are associated with that specific domain and even the answer to if the load balancer is working correctly. - Waije ColerInfoPay
7. iPerf
There's nothing more important to network connections than bandwidth. It's what drives the user experience. iPerf is an essential tool for testing throughput, packet loss and true network performance. Whether you're testing backbones infrastructure or multi-point wireless, iPerf gives you real-world statistics on what your users will experience while using the network. - Tom RobertoCore Technology Solutions 

8. Netcat
Every IT Pro should already know about this tool or quickly review the very extensive capabilities offered by Netcat. It is a command-line driven tool offering a wide range of network interactions that can be easily scripted or piped between different other command-line tools. - Maxime RousseauPersonal Capital
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9. Omnipeek
A great network troubleshooting tool is like the jack in your car. You use it rarely, but when you do, it has to do some heavy lifting. When you need insights from a packet trace file, you need software with a workflow that can rapidly make visible what you need to know. Omnipeek offers the best network packet analysis and workflow in the industry, helping networking pros reduce MTTR. - Larry ZulchSavvius, a LiveAction Company
10. Charles
Charles continues to prove itself as a critical tool for analyzing network traffic. It acts as a proxy, so all traffic flows through it, even HTTPS requests, and lets you replay and modify responses in real time. Breakpoints allow you to effectively pause the communication, make minor tweaks and resume so you can test changes or validate your application's behavior. - Luke WallaceBottle Rocket