Friday, September 11, 2009

Tips for troubleshooting slowdowns in small business networks

#1: Bad NICs

Intermittent network errors, particularly those isolated to a specific workstation or server, can often be traced to a failing network interface card. When you believe a network adapter may be failing, visually inspect the card's LED link lights.

A solid green (or amber) LED indicates the NIC has a good active physical connection with another network device, such as a network switch or router (blinking LEDs typically indicate the NIC possesses an active connection and is processing network traffic). If the LED is not lit green, it's likely the network adapter is disabled within Windows or doesn't have an active connection to the network. It's also possible the cable plugged into the NIC is connected to a nonfunctioning wall-jack or faulty network port.

If you can rule out nonfunctioning wall-jacks and faulty network ports (the easiest method of doing so is to connect the same network connection to a laptop known to have a properly functioning network adapter), and if the network adapter is properly enabled and configured in Windows, it's likely the NIC is bad and requires replacement.

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