Conclusion

One of the greatest sources of frustration for any systems administrator is to try to isolate whether poor server performance is due to a network issue or problems with an application or database. The worry can be amplified, especially as network instability is often under the control of network engineers who need evidence pointing to problems in their domain of expertise before they will be convinced to act.

These tips should help provide you with a definitive answer by enabling you to isolate the source of most network problems and helping you make their resolution much faster.

The next chapter builds on this new knowledge and expands your troubleshooting skills to include the reading of Linux error log files to assist in the diagnosis of unexpected Linux application behavior.