Introduction to Troubleshooting

Introduction to Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting is a skill, and like all skills, you will get better at it the more you have to perform it. The more troubleshooting situations you are placed in, the more your skills will improve, and as a result of this, the more your confidence will grow. However, don’t start wishing for issues to happen in your organization just so that you can get more experience. Although there is no right or wrong way to troubleshoot, there is definitely a more efficient and effective way to troubleshoot that all experienced troubleshooters follow. This section begins by introducing you to troubleshooting. It then focuses on a structured troubleshooting approach that provides you with some common methods to enhance your efficiency.

Defining Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting at its essence is the process of responding to a problem report (sometimes in the form of a trouble ticket), diagnosing the underlying cause of the problem, and resolving the problem. Although you normally think of the troubleshooting process as beginning when a user reports an issue, you need to understand that through effective network monitoring you may detect a situation that could become a troubleshooting issue and resolve that situation before it impacts users.

After an issue is reported, the first step toward resolution is clearly defining the issue. When you have a clearly defined troubleshooting target, you can begin gathering further information related to it. From this information, you should be able to better define the issue. Then based on your diagnosis, you can propose an hypothesis about what is most likely causing the issue. Then the evaluation of these likely causes leads to the identification of the suspected underlying root cause of the issue.

After you identify a suspected underlying cause, you next define approaches to resolving the issue and select what you consider to be the best approach. Sometimes the best approach to resolving an issue cannot be implemented immediately. For example, a piece of equipment might need replacing, or a business’s workflow might be disrupted by implementing such an approach during working hours. In such situations, a troubleshooter might use a temporary fix until a permanent fix can be put in place.

Let’s look at an example. It is 3:00 p.m. at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. On this day, the hotel cannot register guests or create the keycards needed for guest rooms. After following the documented troubleshooting procedures, the network team discovers that Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) has failed on a Cisco Catalyst switch, resulting in a Layer 2 topological loop. Thus, the network is being flooded with traffic, preventing registrations and keycards from being completed because the server is not accessible. The network team now has to decide on the best course of action at this point. The permanent fix of replacing the failed equipment immediately would disrupt the network further and take a considerable amount of time, thus delaying the guest registrations further. A temporary fix would be to disconnect the redundant links involved in the loop so that the Layer 2 loop is broken and guests can be registered at that point. When the impact on guests and guest services is minimal, the network team can implement the permanent fix. Consider  Figure 1-1 , which depicts a simplified model of the troubleshooting steps previously described. 

Figure 1-1 Simplified Troubleshooting Flow

This simplified model consists of three steps:

•  Step 1. Problem report
•  Step 2. Problem diagnosis
•  Step 3. Problem resolution

Of these three steps, most of a troubleshooter’s efforts are spent in the problem diagnosis step. For example, your child reports that the toaster won’t work. That is the problem report step. You have it clarified further, and your child indicates that the toaster does not get hot. So, you decide to take a look at the toaster and diagnose it. This is the problem diagnosis step, which is broken up into multiple subcomponents. Table 1-2 describes key components of this problem diagnosis step.

Table 1-2 Steps to Diagnose a Problem

After collecting, examining, and eliminating, you hypothesize that the power cable for the toaster is not plugged in. You test your hypothesis, and it is correct. Problem solved. This was a simple example, but even with a toaster, you spent the majority of your time diagnosing the problem. Once you determined that there was no electricity to the toaster, you had to figure out whether it was plugged in. If it was plugged in, you then had to consider whether the wall outlet was damaged, or the circuit breaker was off, or the toaster was too old and it broke. All of your effort focused on the problem diagnosis step.

By combining the three main steps with the five substeps, you get the following structured troubleshooting procedure:

• Step 1. Problem report
• Step 2. Collect information
• Step 3. Examine collected information
• Step 4. Eliminate potential causes
• Step 5. Propose an hypothesis
• Step 6. Verify hypothesis
• Step 7. Problem resolution

The Value of Structured Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting skills vary from administrator to administrator, and as mentioned earlier, your skills as a troubleshooter will get better with experience. However, as a troubleshooter, your primary goal is to be efficient. Being fast comes with experience, but it is not worth much if you are not efficient. To be efficient, you need to follow a structured troubleshooting method. A structured troubleshooting method might look like the approach depicted in Figure 1-2 .

If you do not follow a structured approach, you might find yourself moving around troubleshooting tasks in a fairly random way based on instinct. Although in one instance you might be fast at solving the issue, in the next instance you end up taking an unacceptable amount of time. In addition, it can become confusing to remember what you have tried and what you have not. Eventually, you find yourself repeating solutions you have already tried, hoping it works. Also, if another administrator comes to assist you, communicating to that administrator the steps you have already gone through becomes a challenge. Therefore, following a structured troubleshooting approach helps you reduce the possibility of trying the same resolution more than once and inadvertently skipping a task. It also aids in communicating to someone else possibilities that you have already eliminated.

With experience, you will start to see similar issues. In addition, you should have exceptional documentation on past network issues and the steps used to solve them. In such instances, spending time methodically examining information and eliminating potential causes might actually be less efficient than immediately hypothesizing a cause after you collect information about the problem and review past documents. This method, illustrated in Figure 1-3 , is often called the shoot from the hip method . 

Figure 1-2 Example of a Structured Troubleshooting Approach 

Figure 1-3 Example of a Shoot from the Hip Troubleshooting Approach

The danger with the shoot from the hip method is that if your instincts are incorrect, and the problem is not solved, you waste valuable time. Therefore, you need to be able to revert back to the structured troubleshooting approach as needed and examine all collected information.

 A Structured Approach

 No single collection of troubleshooting procedures is capable of addressing all conceivable network issues because there are too many variables (for example, user actions). However, having a structured troubleshooting approach helps ensure that the organization’s troubleshooting efforts are following a similar flow each time an issue arises no matter who is assigned the task. This will allow one troubleshooter to more efficiently take over for or assist another troubleshooter if required.

This section examines each step in a structured approach in more detail as shown in  Figure 1-4 . 

Figure 1-4 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach

1. Problem Report

A problem report from a user often lacks sufficient detail for you to take that problem report and move on to the next troubleshooting process (that is, collect information). For example, a user might report, “The network is broken.” If you receive such a vague report, you probably need to contact the user and ask him exactly what aspect of the network is not functioning correctly.

After your interview with the user, you should be able to construct a more detailed problem report that includes statements such as, when the user does X, she observes Y . For example, “When the user attempts to connect to a website on the Internet, her browser reports a 404 error. However, the user can successfully navigate to websites on her company’s intranet.” Or, “When the user attempts to connect to an FTP site using a web browser, the web browser reports the page can’t be displayed.”

After you have a clear understanding of the issue, you might need to determine who is responsible for working on the hardware or software associated with that issue. For example, perhaps your organization has one IT group tasked with managing switches and another IT group charged with managing routers. Therefore, as the initial point of contact, you might need to decide whether this issue is one you are authorized to address or if you need to forward the issue to someone else who is authorized. If you are not sure at this point, start collecting information so that the picture can become clearer, and be mindful that you might have to pass this information on to another member of your IT group at some point, so accurate documentation is important.

2. Collect Information

When you are in possession of a clear problem report, the next step is gathering relevant information pertaining to the problem, as shown in Figure 1-5 . 

Figure 1-5 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Collect Information)

Efficiently and effectively gathering information involves focusing information gathering efforts on appropriate network entities (for example, routers, servers, switches, or clients) from which information should be collected. Otherwise, the troubleshooter could waste time wading through reams of irrelevant data. For example, to be efficient and effective, the troubleshooter needs to understand what is required to access the resources the end user is unable to access. With our FTP site problem report, the FTP resources are accessible through an FTP client. Troubleshooters not aware of that might spend hours collecting irrelevant data with debug , show , ping , and traceroute commands, when all they had to do was point the user to the FTP client installed on the client’s computer.

 In addition, perhaps a troubleshooter is using a troubleshooting model that follows the path of the affected traffic (as discussed in the “Popular Troubleshooting Methods” section of this chapter), and information needs to be collected from a network device over which the troubleshooter has no access. At that point, the troubleshooter might need to work with appropriate personnel who have access to that device. Alternatively, the troubleshooter might switch troubleshooting models. For example, instead of following the traffic’s path, the troubleshooter might swap components or use a bottom-up troubleshooting model.

3. Examine Collected Information

After collecting information about the problem report (for example, collecting output from show or debug commands, performing packet captures, using ping , or traceroute ), the next structured troubleshooting step is to analyze the collected information as shown in Figure 1-6 . 

Figure 1-6 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Examine Information)

A troubleshooter has two primary goals while examining the collected information:

• Identify indicators pointing to the underlying cause of the problem
• Find evidence that can be used to eliminate potential causes

To achieve these two goals, the troubleshooter attempts to find a balance between two questions:

What is occurring on the network?

What should be occurring on the network?

The delta between the responses to these questions might give the troubleshooter insight into the underlying cause of a reported problem. A challenge, however, is for the troubleshooter to know what currently should be occurring on the network.

If the troubleshooter is experienced with the applications and protocols being examined, the troubleshooter might be able to determine what is occurring on the network and how that differs from what should be occurring. However, if the troubleshooter lacks knowledge of specific protocol behavior, she still might be able to effectively examine the collected information by contrasting that information with baseline data or documentation.

 Baseline data might contain, for example, the output of show and debug commands issued on routers when the network was functioning properly. By contrasting this baseline data with data collected after a problem occurred, even an inexperienced troubleshooter might be able to see the difference between the data sets, thus providing a clue as to the underlying cause of the problem under investigation. This implies that as part of a routine network maintenance plan, baseline data should periodically be collected when the network is functioning properly.

Documentation plays an extremely important role at this point. Accurate and up-to-date documentation can assist a troubleshooter in examining the collected data to determine whether anything has changed in relation to the setup or configuration. Going back to the FTP example, if the troubleshooter was not aware that an FTP client was required, a quick review of the documentation related to FTP connectivity would indicate so. This would allow the troubleshooter to move on to the next step.

4. Eliminate Potential Causes

Following an examination of collected data, a troubleshooter can start to form conclusions based on that data. Some conclusions might suggest a potential cause for the problem, whereas other conclusions eliminate certain causes from consideration (see Figure  1-7 ).

Figure 1-7 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Eliminate Potential Causes)

It is imperative that you not jump to conclusions at this point. Jumping to conclusions can make you less efficient as a troubleshooter as you start formulating hypotheses based on a small fraction of collected data, which leads to more work and slower overall response times to problems. As an example, a troubleshooter might jump to a conclusion based on the following scenario, which results in wasted time:

A problem report indicates that PC A cannot communicate with server A, as shown in Figure 1-8 . The troubleshooter is using a troubleshooting method that follows the path of traffic through the network. The troubleshooter examines output from the show cdp neighbor command on routers R1 and R2. Because those routers do not recognize each other as Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) neighbors, the troubleshooter leaps to the conclusion that Layer 2 and Layer 1 connectivity is down between R1 and R2. The troubleshooter then runs to the physical routers to verify physical connectivity, only to see that all is fine. Reviewing further output and documentation indicates that CDP is disabled on R1 and R2 interfaces for security reasons. Therefore, the output of show cdp neighbors alone is insufficient to conclude that Layer 2 and 1 connectivity was the problem. 

Figure 1-8 Scenario Topology

On another note, a caution to be observed when drawing conclusions is not to read more into the data than what is actually there. As an example, a troubleshooter might reach a faulty conclusion based on the following scenario:

A problem report indicates that PC A cannot communicate with server A, as shown in Figure 1-8 . The troubleshooter is using a troubleshooting method that follows the path of traffic through the network. The troubleshooter examines output from the show cdp neighbor command on routers R1 and R2. Because those routers recognize each other as Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) neighbors, the troubleshooter leaps to the conclusion that these two routers see each other as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) neighbors and have mutually formed OSPF adjacencies. However, the show cdp neighbor output is insufficient to conclude that OSPF adjacencies have been formed between routers R1 and R2.

In addition, if time permits, explaining the rationale for your conclusions to a coworker can often help reveal faulty conclusions. As shown by the previous examples, continuing your troubleshooting efforts based on a faulty conclusion can dramatically increase the time required to resolve a problem.

5. Propose an Hypothesis

By eliminating potential causes of a reported problem, as described in the previous process, troubleshooters should be left with one or a few potential causes that they can focus on. At this point, troubleshooters should rank the potential causes from most likely to least likely. Troubleshooters should then focus on the cause they believe is most likely to be the underlying one for the reported problem and propose an hypothesis, as shown in Figure 1-9 . 

Figure 1-9 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Propose an Hypothesis)

After proposing an hypothesis, troubleshooters might realize that they are not authorized to access a network device that needs to be accessed to resolve the problem report. In such a situation, a troubleshooter needs to assess whether the problem can wait until authorized personnel have an opportunity to resolve the issue. If the problem is urgent and no authorized administrator is currently available, the troubleshooter might attempt to at least alleviate the symptoms of the problem by creating a temporary workaround. Although this approach does not solve the underlying cause, it might help business operations continue until the main cause of the problem can be appropriately addressed.

6. Verify Hypothesis

After troubleshooters propose what they believe to be the most likely cause of a problem, they need to develop a plan to address the suspected cause and implement it. Alternatively, if troubleshooters decide to implement a workaround, they need to come up with a plan and implement it while noting that a permanent solution is still needed. However, implementing a plan that resolves a network issue often causes temporary network outages for other users or services. Therefore, the troubleshooter must balance the urgency of the problem with the potential overall loss of productivity, which ultimately affects the financial bottom line. There should be a change management procedure in place that helps the troubleshooter determine the most appropriate time to make changes to the production network and the steps required to do so. If the impact on workflow outweighs the urgency of the problem, the troubleshooter might wait until after business hours to execute the plan.

A key (and you should make it mandatory) component in implementing a problem solution is to have the steps documented. Not only does a documented list of steps help ensure the troubleshooter does not skip any, but such a document can serve as a rollback plan if the implemented solution fails to resolve the problem. Therefore, if the problem is not resolved after the troubleshooter implements the plan, or if the execution of the plan resulted in one or more additional problems, the troubleshooter should execute the rollback plan. After the network is returned to its previous state (that is, the state prior to deploying the proposed solution); the troubleshooter can then reevaluate her hypothesis.  Although the troubleshooter might have successfully identified the underlying cause, perhaps the solution failed to resolve that cause. In that case, the troubleshooter could create a different plan to address that cause. Alternatively, if the troubleshooter had identified other causes and ranked them during the propose an hypothesis step, she can focus her attention on the next most likely cause and create an action plan to resolve that cause and implement it.

This process can be repeated until the troubleshooter has exhausted the list of potential causes or is unable to collect information that can point to other causes, as shown in  Figure 1-10 . At that point, a troubleshooter might need to gather additional information or enlist the aid of a coworker or the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC). 

Figure 1-10 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Verify Hypothesis)

7. Problem Resolution

This is the final step of the structured approach, as shown in Figure 1-11 . Although this is one of the most important steps, it is often forgotten or overlooked. After the reported problem is resolved, the troubleshooter should make sure that the solution becomes a documented part of the network. This implies that routine network maintenance will maintain the implemented solution. For example, if the solution involves reconfiguring a Cisco IOS router, a backup of that new configuration should be made part of routine network maintenance practices.

As a final task, the troubleshooter should report the problem resolution to the appropriate party or parties. Beyond simply notifying a user that a problem has been resolved, the troubleshooter should get user confirmation that the observed symptoms are now gone. This task confirms that the troubleshooter resolved the specific issue reported in the problem report, rather than a tangential issue. 

Figure 1-11 A Structured Troubleshooting Approach (Problem Resolution)