Network Tools and Utilities You can use command line network tools and utilities to test the status of both the services and the network infrastructure of your Network Load Balancing cluster.

You can use command line network tools and utilities to test the status of both the services and the network infrastructure of your Network Load Balancing cluster. You can use the information collected by these tools and utilities to analyze service, network operation, and variations in performance. You can use the tools and utilities interactively, or you can store their output in files for later analysis. You can use the following tools and utilities interactively to provide status information about the Network Load Balancing cluster:

Netdiag A utility that performs a series of tests to isolate networking and connectivity problems; it is also used to determine the functional state of your network client. Netdiag performs extensive testing of the computer on which it is run, including checking the availability of WINS and DNS. You install Netdiag with the support tools, which are available in the \Support\Tools directory of your Windows 2000 compact disc.

Ping A utility used to troubleshoot IP-level connectivity. Ping allows you to specify the size of packets to use (the default is 32 bytes), how many to send, whether to record the route used, what Time to Live (TTL) value to use, and whether to set the don't fragment flag. Ping provides a minimum average and maximum roundtrip time (RTT), which is useful to analyze where routing delays occur.

Pathping A route-tracing tool that combines the features of Ping and Tracert with additional unique information. Over a period of time, Pathping sends packets to each router on the path to a final destination, and then computes results that are based on the packets that are returned from each hop. Pathping shows the degree of packet loss at any given router or link, so that you can pinpoint which routers or links might be causing network problems.

Tracert A route-tracing utility that displays a list of router interfaces from the routers along the path between a source host and a destination. Tracert uses the IP TTL field in Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Requests and ICMP Time Exceeded messages to determine the path from a source to a destination through an IP internetwork.

Nslookup A utility that is used for troubleshooting DNS problems, such as host name resolution failure. Nslookup displays a command prompt and shows the host name and IP address of the local DNS server. You can then perform interactive queries to test DNS name resolution.

Netstat A utility that is used to display protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections. You can display the connection status and throughput statistics for TCP/IP interfaces in the computer.

ARP A utility that is used to display and modify the IP-to-physical address translation tables in hosts and routers that the address resolution protocol uses.