Best Network Troubleshooting Tools for IP Pros

The idea of using templates to drive configuration of network devices is something that has HUGE and immediate benefit to network engineers, but sadly not many are using them. Of the small number of folks I’ve seen doing anything like this, it’s usually some ugly Microsoft Excel macro that they’ve used for years and never shared with anyone. Admirable of course, but not the total picture of why templates are useful. First, consider the networking industry — and network engineering tools — tends to run in cycles. This world was almost completely centralized; the mainframe was the cloud. Upgrading to 10GBASE-T would address this issue, but the vast majority of installed cabling is Cat 5e / Class D, so this cable would need to be replaced with Cat 6A or better – an expensive proposition. To address this issue, the NBASE-T Alliance was formed with the goal of breathing new life into existing enterprise network infrastructure.

When I need to troubleshoot network performance at a single site, or from a particular perspective, I rely on SolarWinds Real-Time NetFlow Analyzer. SolarWinds Port Scanner – FREE TOOL A free tool that identifies which IP addresses within a given range are in use and then checks all of the TCP and UDP ports on each. SolarWinds SFTP/SCP Server – FREE TOOL A free secure file transfer system that can manage multiple file movements from different devices simultaneously. I would love the opportunity to play with it but I dont have access to JunOS. I can’t imagine it being much different than getting Cisco to run.

The Idiosyncrasies of IPv6 on Cisco Devices

Another handy tool is an RJ-45 crimper, shown in Figure B. The crimper in the figure actually contains a wire cutter, a wire stripper, and a crimper. This single tool can cut a pierce of CAT-5 cable, strip off the end, and place an RJ-45 connector onto the cable’s end. The number-one tool that no network guru should be without is a cable tester.

Analyze flows, validate intent and troubleshoot with the lights on. Easily identify users, apps, and devices that are consuming the most bandwidth. Angry IP Scanner A free tool that gathers IP address usage data. This utility offers a lightweight IP address manager and also a port scanner.

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager – FREE TRIAL

Wireshark is an unparalleled network protocol analyzer, and honestly, one of the best free network tools ever made. This tool can be run either from the GUI or via command-line if needed and it gives insights into TCP/UDP port statuses, Resolves hosts names, MAC Addresses and even OS fingerprinting. It’s easy to use, and absolutely free for small, focused logging engagements. You can view logs in real-time, gather stats, and even setup warnings and alerts. It’s not just Syslog messages, but also SNMP traps you can collect and analyze with Kiwi. OpManager uses a threshold system to identify when performance is likely to get impaired.

Whether it’s making a normal change to infrastructure, or reacting to an issue, there’s some process we go through to get our work as network engineers done. A popular example of this is GitHub – which in addition to being a remote git server, also has a myriad of tools for collaboration. However, GitHub is just one site – and there are plenty of other hosted solutions (i.e. BitBucket), or are downloadable as a server on your own internal network (i.e. Gerrit). TCPTraceroute – This tool traces paths through networks using TCP rather than ICMP.

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Companies that are large enough will be able to take the pieces built by cloud and hyper-convergence folks, and then use them to construct their own systems. To linux network engineer put it simply, commodity information technology will eventually prove to create commodity companies, stifling the ability of many larger companies to compete.

Measuring the bandwidth is something you want to do, at some point in your job. Anyone working in IT should have some kind of Virtualization platform. For the must-have software for a network engineer, we selected Oracle VirtualBox. A slightly better alternative to it is VMWare Workstation, but you have to pay for it. Among this category of software, Notepad++ is the absolute king. It simply is a white box where you can put text, and that’s it.

Here’s the Best Network Admin Tools & Software:

The world of wireshark keeps on getting more amazing like here Laura chappal is explaining how to analyze data for Deep Space Networking where some satellites are talking. A network security specialist provides support to the computer networks by detecting, preventing, and resolving threats to the networks. A person in this position also analyzes security risks and develops security measures to address the threats.

• Usually, open-source automation tools like Ansible and Netmiko are amazing because they are free, open-source, and allow a lot of flexibility.
• Support of the enterprise network falls to the Network Engineer, and the network is only as good as the copper or fiber infrastructure that supports it.
• It allows easier management and connection of network devices through SSH.

I’m of the opinion that “once you know what you don’t know, you’re halfway there”. After all, if you don’t know what you don’t know, then you can’t very well learn what you don’t know, can you? In that spirit, this article will introduce a few concepts briefly, and every single one will require a lot of hands-on practice and research to really understand thoroughly. However, it’s a good starting point, and I think if you can add even a few of these skills, your marketability as a network engineer will increase dramatically. Nfdump – Flow information gathered by fprobe can be exported to nfdump, which stores it in a file system that it can read and use to display the data based on protocols and rank top users. This can be used to address time-of-day congestion issues, for example.