Trouble shooting your network
continued from: No internet.
Now you have the right IP settings, and you can “ping” your router/default gateway. But you still don’t have any internet when you try and browse.
When you ping gitui.com this is what you see:
This could be one of two things,
Either your bandwidth is up, or the website you are trying to ping is down. In my experience, 90% of the time its bandwidth. Then try to open your service provider’s website.
open Internet explorer, or firefox. If your ADSL username and password is username@youradsl.co.za then chances are the your ISP’s website will be youradsl.co.za. So go to youradsl.co.za. If it opens, you know for a fact that its your bandwidth. get hold of your ISP and request more bandwidth. Once they apply more bandwidth to your account, everything should be working.
Not bandwidth, and everything is connected?
Open your browser and go to tools > options or internet options.
look for network settings, or for a button that says: configure how you the browser connects to the internet.
Open the options and look for a button that says: “Automatically detect proxy settings.”
Tick the radio button or select it and press ok.
Your computer will then automatically get the proxy settings from your router to connect to the internet.
If none of these work, give your IT guy a call. He will fix it for you.
What is a proxy? (I’ll explain later)
No internet?
Have you ever gotten to your desk on a Monday morning knowing you have many emails you need to look at? When you hit send and receive, you get error messages? You try and connect to the internet and get another error?
Here is how you can narrow it down before you call your computer guy. (Windows)
Check your IP settings.
Click on start, then run. When the run box opens, type in: cmd - and hit enter.
When a little black windows opens, type in: ipconfig - Hit enter
That will then bring up all the settings you need for your network.
Check to see if you have the right network settings.
The results should look similar to these above. If not, then we probably found the problem.
First thing to check:
Are all the cables plugged in properly? No loose connections? Are you connected to the wireless? If there are no loose connections, make sure that your router/switch is plugged in and on. If all of those are correct, go back to your computer.
On the bottom right of your screen, on your task bar, you will see an icon of 2 computers, or a single computer that has 3 lines coming out of it. There will either be an exclamation mark on it or a red cross. Right click on that and then click on repair. It will do its thing and tell you that it should be working.
If it tells you that it cannot renew the IP address, double check your connections and make double sure the routers/switches are on.
If it does the repair successfully, go back to checking your IP settings. If it then gives you something close to mine, either 10.0.0.5, 192.168.1.6, then you should be connected.
you should have 3 sets of addresses.
IPv4 settings 192.168.1.10
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.1
If those are right, do the following:
In Command prompt, type in: ping gitui.com
That then sends a small packet to my blog, and my blog then replies, that means you are successfully connected to the internet.
Still no internet? We’ll look deeper into it tomorrow.
Not sure what your network settings should be? read this
Default gateway, what is it?
We have now covered Ip addresses and Subnet mask.
Now the third thing to be explained is default gateway.
This is generally the ip address of the router or the computer that does the initial connection to the internet. Most of the default IP adresses are something like this: 10.0.0.2 or 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254. If your Router has one of those IP addresses, generally found in the manual of the router.
The same goes for the DNS address. This can be the same as the router itself, and then the router will do the actual proccess of DNS. Dns server addresses look like IP addresses.
DNS (Domain Name Service) is basically a server that has a long list of IP addresses that link up to website addresses. So www.gitui.com will be translated into 72.167.96.53. Without DNS, the internet would be very slow and difficult to surf.
More on DNS. (a bit later)
Subnet mask
Earlier I wrote about IP address settings. Now its time for the Subnet mask.
The subnet mask is the 255.255.255.0 or 255.0.0.0. That actually does mean something. Think of it as the area code for your network.
Subnetting is the process of creating more than one private network from one public network address by customizing your subnet mask. So the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 cannot be seen by a network on the subnet of 255.0.0.0. because it will be trying to send a packet from the one street address to another adress in that steet with a different area code.
A subnet allows the flow of network traffic between hosts to be segregated based on a network configuration. By organizing hosts into logical groups, subnetting can improve network security and performance.
Subnet Mask
Perhaps the most recognizable aspect of subnetting is the subnet mask. Like IP addresses, a subnet mask contains four bytes (32 bits) and is often written using the same “dotted-decimal” notation. For example, a very common subnet mask in its binary representation
11111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
is typically shown in the equivalent, more readable form
255.255.255.0
Applying a Subnet Mask
A subnet mask neither works like an IP address, nor does it exist independently from them. Instead, subnet masks work with an IP address and the two values work together. Applying the subnet mask to an IP address splits the address into two parts, an “extended network address” and a host address.
For the first part of this series:
Network Failure
I was at a client today that told me he had a network problem. When I got to his computer, his network settings looked like this:
Click on image for full view
That is wrong. I thought I’d tell you how network IP settings work.
The IP adress is like a normal residential address.
The first set of digits (up to 3), Before the first dot, can be the city you are sending a packet to.
The 2nd set of digits (up to 3), before the second dot, can be thought of as the suburb you live in.
The 3rd set of digits, before the third dot, can be thought of as the street you live in.
the 4th set of digits, after the 3rd dot, can be thought of as your street number.
The correct IP address for a given network can look like this. 192.168.1.5 or 10.0.0.2 or 200.200.201.1
so the 192 can be translated into “Cape Town”
168 can be translated into “Tokai”
1 can be translated into “Tokai rd”
and the 5 could be “nr 21″
A computer wont understand a normal address, so it turns it into numbers.
Local Network
On your local network everyone will have the same first 3 sets of digits, the last one will be different. If it is not, there is a problem. It would then mean 2 different computers life in the same address and the packets won’t know where to go.
So your local network is “in the same road” but on different locations.
Later I will explain what the Subnet mask means. The 255.255.255.0
Let me know if you understand what I wrote here. If not, ask and I will try and explain again
1. Network Failure
2. Subnet mask, the way it works
