Network Troubleshooting Tools
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Ping, Traceroute, and Netstat are all utilities which aid in the gathering of information about the TCP/IP workings of your computer and the way it interacts with others at the network level of the OSI model. They use mostly ICMP messages to perform diagnostic tests, so that you can determine where a problem lies with your connection or network. Ping is a very useful tool in verifying that you have network connectivity, or if another computer does. You can ping out to well known websites, such as google, which is generally functioning correctly, so you will get an accurate reply almost all of the time. When you receive a reply from a large, well known website, it is safe to say that you have connectivity. When the request times out, there is a problem, generally with your stack, so it is narrowed down.

Traceroute is a useful utility in determining where the problem is with a connection. You can see where your packets are lost with this utility, and discern whether the problem is local or with a router along the way. However, as TCP packets will take the best route possible at all times, the route your packets take can change each time you perform this test, so the results are not always completely accurate.

Netstat is another troubleshooting tool, which allows you to see the information about your current network configuration, and the TCP/IP traffic which is running on it. You can check and see what ports are open and listening, look at the active connections, and especially look at your routing table. You can also get a statistics summary. All of this is very useful in troubleshooting network connectivity problems.

I have used Ping and Traceroute often, but I find that ping is much more useful. When a problem with your connection is located at another router, it is good to know but if the router is not in your network, you really have no control over it. This utility would be more useful on a large scan lan or wan, where the administrators can diagnose the problem and go to the router and fix it. Ping I use much more often from home. It will allow me to see what the IP address of a target is, or check and see if I have connectivity at all to a certain site or the internet itself.