Net connectivity is one of the most frequently faced problems by the users, whether it's related to strength / speed of the network or connection to the server itself.
There are times when the speed is slow so many of general users go to online speed test sites but that's all well and fine when you have a nice connection up and running but when connection goes down.. Well! Then you won't be able to open those speed test sites would you. Then your first instinct would be switch router/modem off and on and hope that it would work, but there are various problems related to net connectivity the best way to resolve is by identifying them and working on solving them accordingly.
This is where Command Prompt kicks in....this is the best tool that has been inbuilt in the system and thee best part about it is that it works on basic level. It communicates directly to the hardware and its users.
So now lets see how can we exercise this inbuilt tool to our benefits, say we have connection problem and it's either very slow or limited access or might even have no access, the only thing we know is it isn't working like it should even when we tried eternal resolving technique of switching off and back on modem. So we move towards identifying the problem through Command Prompt.
First we check if the hardware of the system is working properly or not.
The way to check the functionality of your own hardware is to make it ping itself i.e., the hardware is sending a packet to itself and receiving it. It's like we need to check if both our hands are working or not so we give a packet from one hand to another if the packet is given properly the first hand is working and if received properly the second hand is working properly, in this case the two hands a system are sender and receiver. If these two work properly that means our hardware is working just fine. This can be checked easily by single command.
ping 127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1 is always and always the IP Add. That points towards the hardware of the system, this is a default static universal IP Add. That does not change with change in system. Once you've used this command the set of information will be displayed. First notice the stats of the ping.... that is whether the packets sent is equal to packets received and if the time is less than 1ms. These condition are ideal and should be accurate to 0% loss of packets and the time in any case must be less or equal than 1ms, if not then your system's internal hardware isn't working properly.If this is all well and fine we move to next phase.
Ping Your Router/Modem
Once we have learned that there is nothing wrong with the hardware of the system we then ping our router. The by default add. Of our router is 192.168.1.1 again this add is static for all hardware universally. So ping at this add. By simple command of
ping 192.168.1.1
now we evaluate the stats presented to us. Check if there is a packet loss, if yes then connectivity is poor. There must not be any packet loss for connection to be stable. Next you check the avg. time which should be less than 10ms for it to work fast. However this will depend on your net plan you might see time in range of 0 - 50 ms. The more the avg time the less speed you're getting. Time ranging 0-1000ms will work fine knowing at 1000ms speed is slow but if avg. time is beyond then connection is way to poor. On the other hand if you see packet loss, that means there is unstable connection. So this forwards us to next step knowing which end isn't working properly.
Trace Your Packets
We know there is a loss of packets, but we don’t know where the packet got lost. So we use “tracert” command so trace the path of packet. So let’s try to connect to google and see where our packets go missing. The path is always the same in general manner. The packet will first go to host à to router à server of our network provider à server of the target àand will finally reaches the target. So this is how you use trace command
tracert google.comThis will generate the path through which the packet is going through. It will be complicated to notice which Ip Add. Belongs to who. All you need to understand is that your packet is missing before 192.168.1.1 or after. If it is losing before the given add then the fault is on your end and if packet loses after the add. Then the fault is on your service provider’s end
