Before diving too deep into the problem take a step back and check the basics. Sometimes we overlook the simple stuff and it makes problem resolutions take much much longer.
Remember that most network problems fall into one of the following three categories:
- Physical – Cables unplugged, hardware failures, environmental conditions
- Configuration – Maybe something has changed, has a service provider made changes recently
- Software – malicious software, bad application updates, etc
Some simple things to check before moving to anything more complicated include the following:
- Check to make sure the device is powered on (dont laugh)
- Make sure that if you are remote, you are working with someone who is familiar with the setup.
- If you are on-site take some time to look over things, if you get in too much of a hurry you can miss something
- Check to make sure that cables have not come unhooked (power, I/O, Network, etc)
- After verifying a network link, check to make sure the device has a proper IP address
- Use the device to try and ping its default gateway… then something on the internet (like 4.2.2.1)
- Ask questions, make sure nothing is new to the environment, check with the controller to make sure they don’t have information that could be valuable to troubleshooting.
