Common Network Problems and How to Help?

Item: Common Network Problems and How to Help?
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Author: Jessie Mitchell

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Despite the effort of IT professionals to create a robust network, some problems still occur. These might be on and off or consistent. Whichever the case, networking problems are costly and may lead to invaluable losses for a business. Fixing these problems is expensive, especially if you do not have IT personnel in your firm.

In this article, we will explore the most common network issues and how to fix them yourself.

Table of Contents

File and Printer Inaccessibility

In a computer network, local files are shared among the connected users. Also, printers in a network should be accessed by everyone connected to that network can access it. In some cases, sharing becomes a problem due to the conflicting settings on the printer and individual PCs.

The very first fix option is checking the firewalls. In some configurations, the workstation’s firewalls are set to block the file-sharing and printer signals and usually happens after installing new antivirus software on the network. Configure all workstations to be on the same subnet. And lastly, check on the permissions. Under this, check that the network type is set to public, reconfigure homegroup, use appropriate workgroups, and correct all NTFS permissions.

Problem Connecting to the World Wide Web

This is the most challenging networking problem that you can ever face. This issue cannot be solved entirely by yourself when your local network fails to access the internet. In many cases, you will be required to troubleshoot the system and send the details to your internet service provider. So, start by rebooting routers and modems. Tracert and utility are then employed to identify the exact point with the hiccup.

IP Address Already in Use

This error will be displayed on your screen when your computer tries to communicate to a network using an IP address already assigned to another device. What causes it? Apart from the human error, the problem usually results when the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is enabled by default to assign static addresses to multiple computers.

This issue can be fixed by the users in the network or by the administrator. If you are an administrator, check the newly introduced device into the network and disable its DHCP server. For network users, type “ipconfig/renew” in the command prompt and press enter. Your computer will be assigned a new Ip address that is not already in use.

IP Address Exhaustion

When you run out of IP addresses on a network, your OS will notify you that it did not get any address from the DHCP server. There are many reasons for this problem. The request sent by your computer might fail to reach the DHCP server due to malfunctioning server networking parts. The DHCP server may be out of a free IP address to assign to your device. And lastly, your device might be set to a static address and not to use that of a DHCP. To fix the problem, buy a new router.

DNS Problems

This problem will make your computer display the following errors:

DNS Name Not Existing
The Network Path Not Available
IP Address Could Not be Found

What causes it is the conflicting DNS settings. Use the command-line utility to effortlessly check your DNS settings.

To fix this problem, configure all networking devices to only recognize their DNS servers and not from the DHCP. Also, set your adapters to automatically get the DNS server address. We cannot explore all the network-related problems. Most of them can be resolved without the help of IT professionals. Just ensure that all server networking parts are working correctly and configure all the devices within the network correctly. If that does not help, call an expert to help you.