The ping utility is the first suggested tool. It is used in the provision of basic connectivity test between the host requesting and the destination host. This can be accomplished by use of Internet Control Message Protocol. It has the ability to send an echo packet to its destination host as well as the mechanism to listen for the response the host gives. For example, if an office has a problem with internet connection, the ping utility can be utilized in helping figure out whether the problem exists within or outside the office (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011).
The tracert or trace route can be used after the ping utility has been used. It determines a more specific information about the path to the host destination which includes the route taken by the packet as well as the response time of the intermediate hosts. Nslookup is another tool. It is used to lookup a particular IP address which is associated with a domain name, this utility is used to query specific DNS servers so as to determine the issue associated with the DNS servers which is configured to the host. Netstat is another utility that can be used. Some of the important issues that need to be looked into is the state of the active network connection of a host(Marston et al2011).