Workshop

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Hour 19
Internet/Intranet Troubleshooting
I remember when a co-worker loudly proclaimed that the Internet was a waste of time and that all of us
who were fascinated with it had best find another line of work. Well, although he’s a nice enough guy,
he’s not exactly a terrific fortune teller. The Internet has been more successful than any of us ever
dreamed.
The basic idea behind this hour is that the same backhoes and steamrollers used to fix the “information
superhighway” at large are also used to troubleshoot your local streets and byways. We’ll start off by
defining the Internet versus intranets and quickly get into troubleshooting techniques.
Definitions
Nobody needs to define the Internet for you. The source of life, the Mecca of computer civilization, the
wellspring from which information flows, the fount of all packets good and ill, is the Internet. In the
space of one kid’s college career, the Internet has gone from being a pretty nice resource for computer
geeks, to being indispensable for geeks, to being indispensable for everyone. Many folks used to call the
Internet a “noncritical resource,” but that’s no longer the case, particularly if your business relies on
email or a Web page to keep in touch with customers. Nowadays, it’s a vital resource; if it’s down,
oftentimes folks can’t do their work. For example, this book was edited largely over the Internet. Had it
been down—I don’t want to think about it!
The millions and millions of TCP/IP-connected computers and networks in the world all network in
pretty much the same way that we’ve been talking about since Hour 1, “The Telephone Analogy:
Becoming Familiar with Basic Networking Concepts,” but just on a different scale. When your
workstation sends a request for a Web page to a server at www.microsoft.com, a name-to-IP-address
DNS lookup is done; then a TCP/IP call is sent up to the server, assisted by anywhere from three to a
dozen routers in between.
Should troubleshooting your Internet connection differ from the TCP/IP troubleshooting that you’ve
already learned? Not fundamentally. However, with the next level of complexity comes the next level of
troubleshooting techniques. In a nutshell, a fault with the Internet connection at your location definitely
involves your ISP (Internet service provider) but may not be its fault. We’ll talk about the types of
firewalls that you might have in your shop and then discuss ways to point the finger at routing problems,
name resolution problems, and whether you should call your ISP into the fray for a given problem.