Do you often run into problems where you can't get a computer to connect to another computer or other network device on Windows?. Here are some simple checks to perform when debugging network problems:
1. Has each machine got an IP address? Go to command prompt and run ipconfig. Key things to check here are the interfaces and ensuring the appropriate ones have IP addresses.
2. Check both machines IP addresses are in the same range and subnet if you are running it on an internal or Virtual network.
3. Try pinging each machine from the other to see if they can communicate with each other.
4. If Pinging fails then check to see if firewalls are active. If the communication is within a "safe" internal network then try disabling the firewalls and re-pinging.
5. If pinging fails and you are connecting through several networks then try running a tracert to see at which switch on the network the connection is failing.
6. If the connections are over a wireless network then check signal strength. Click the wireless network icon in the notification area in the lower right corner of the screen.
7. Try drawing a network diagram of the connections to help in visualizing the problem.
8. If you are connecting through routers, firewalls or load balancers then check that all devices are not tied to any specific ip addresses and that the IP address redirection (if in place) is correct. Also check any NAT logs to see if connections are being received and properly re-directed.
Article Resource: stackoverflow.com Toby Mills Web Consultant with over 10 years experience developing online applications using .Net, VB, C#, JS, HTML etc..
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