Workshop

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Hour 18
“Lots of Different People in Your Neighborhood”: In-
Depth Application Troubleshooting
Sadly, most problems won’t be reported to you as “I can’t update my customer database due to
insufficient file permissions” or “A network checksum error due to bad router code is making my print file
garbled.” (I only wish!) Most times, in addition to the generic troubleshooting mechanisms we discussed
in Part II and the initial application investigation techniques we discussed in Hour 17, “Where Do I
Start?,” you’re going to have to do some specific application-level investigation.
This hour, you’re going to grab a backhoe and do some major digging in your network neighborhood to
aid you in specifically determining where an application’s network problem is coming from. We’re going
to talk about file and print networking, further define its difference from client/server networking, and talk
about common problems and diagnostic techniques for both.
Service Definitions
There are two ways to think of the services that a workstation gets from a server:
• File and print
• Client/server
These are the topics of the next sections.
File and Print Services
When most folks think about the common ways that people network and share files, they’re thinking of
file and print services. This is the typical way Windows users share a hard drive with other users and
allow remote users to map a drive letter on their PCs to the hard drive on the network.
File and print services allow a user to transfer entire files over the network—and that’s it. There are no
“smarts” behind the server at the other end; it cannot search a file or files for you the way Yahoo or
AltaVista can. File and print networking offers a simple and basic file transfer service.
For example, all application programs that can be run from the network using file and print services