Troubleshooting TCP/IP
Windows XP Professional includes several command-line tools and utilities that can help you to isolate and resolve TCP/IP-related issues.
Connectivity tools include the following:
- finger: displays information about a user for a particular computer. The target computer must be running the Finger service.
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol): transfers files to and from FTP servers over a TCP/IP connection.
- LPR: sends one or more files to be printed via a line printer daemon (LPD) printer.
- telnet: establishes a terminal emulation session for working on remote systems, including Unix, mainframe and minicomputer systems.
- Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP): copies files to and from remote computers that are running the TFTP service.
Diagnostic tools include the following:
- Address Resolution Protocol (ARP): lists and edits the IP-to-Ethernet (or Token Ring) physical translation tables that ARP uses.
- hostname: lists the name of the local host (computer).
- ipconfig: shows all of the current TCP/IP configuration settings for the local computer, such as its IP address, subnet mask, and any WINS servers and DNS servers assigned to the computer. Special switches deal with the DNS portion of the IP session. The /registerdns, /displaydns and / flushdns switches will register the client with DNS, show the DNS cache, and flush out the DNS cache, respectively.
- LPQ: shows the current status of the print queue on a computer that is running the LPD service.
- Nbtstat: displays network protocol statistics and lists the current connections using NetBIOS over TCP/IP. The -R and -RR switches can help refresh the cache, as well as send release packets to WINS and then refresh the client connection.
- Netstat: displays network protocol statistics and lists the current TCP/IP connections.
- ping: used to test TCP/IP-related connectivity to remote computers and to verify the proper TCP/IP configuration of the local host computer by attempting to ping the loopback address for the local host, eg: ping 127.0.0.1.
- route: edits the local computer's routing tables.
- tracert: displays the route (path) that data packets follow as they travel from the local computer to a remote destination computer.
