16.4 Testing the configuration
In this part you will use show commands to interrogate the configuration of the routers. Also you will use ping and traceroute commands to test connectivity between devices.
Watch the video below, which is about 2 minutes long. It demonstrates using the commands above to test connectivity, and then saving the configuration.
Box _unit9.2.6 Testing the configuration
Transcript
To test this we can use ping. From PC-A1 we will ping contoso.com. The A record for contoso.com points to the IP address of the DNS server. If the ping is successful, we know everything is configured and working correctly. The first time you do this ping you may drop one to three pings. This depends on the ARP caches of each device on the network and whether an ARP request needs to be sent. So from PC-A1 if we ping contoso.com we should get a successful ping – like that.
If we move to PC-B1 and try to ping contoso.com the pings fail. This is because PC-B1 is only configured to use IPv6 and the DNS server does not have an IPv6 A record or quad A record configured. To test connectivity we can just ping the IPv6 address of the DNS server. So if we do ping 2001:DB8:FADE:1000::10 we should get a response – like that.
Another useful command to help troubleshoot when you have issues would be traceroute. Traceroute shows the hops taken to get to a destination. So if we type tracert contoso.com into PC-A1, we can see that we get a response from 172.20.16.1 and then 172.20.31.253 and then 172.20.32.10. This is what is expected. As you can see, it’s responding with Branch-A’s gigabit 0/0 interface and then the Central router’s gigabit 0/0 interface and then the DNS server’s IP address.
Example _unit9.2.3 Activity 9 Test yourself
2 minutes
ITQ _unit9.2.4
-
Match the description to the correct command:
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ping
-
tracert
a.A command that can be used to test whether there is end-to-end connectivity
b.A command that tracks the path of the traffic between routers and which can show you where in the device sequence a fault is.
- 1 = a
- 2 = b
Using the following two lists, match each numbered item with the correct letter.
Activity _unit9.2.7 Activity 10 Try it out
Open PT Anywhere [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] in a new tab or window so you can read these instructions. This is the fully configured network.
1. In the last video you saw traceroute being used with an IPv4 address, but not with an IPv6 address. From PC-B2, use traceroute to check the route to the DNS server, which has an IPv6 address of 2001:DB8:FADE:1000::10. Is the result what you would expect?
2. The DNS server also has an IPv4 address, which is 172.20.32.10. Try pinging this from PC-B2. Explain your result.
Answer
1. When I did this I got:
1 1 ms 0 ms 0 ms 2001:DB8:FADE:100::1
2 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 2001:DB8:FFFF:FFFF::1
3 0 ms 1 ms 0 ms 2001:DB8:FADE:1000::10
The first line is the response from Branch-B router’s G0/1 interface. The second line is from Central router’s G0/1 interface. The third line is from the DNS server. This is what we would expect if the network is working properly.
2. The ping fails because the Branch-B router is configured for only IPv6 addresses (and also the Central router’s G0/1 interface is configured only for IPv6 addresses). Even if these were dual stack, and able to handle both IPv4 and IPv6, the ping would fail because PC-B2 has no IPv4 address, so there is no address to send the response to the ping to.