Features

While PCs will probably cause you the most amount of trouble with a network, you also need to know what to do if your network printer, storage or other device stops working. You'll need to have their manuals to hand to find out how to access network settings and make any necessary changes.

Printer panic

Network printers generally have small LCD control panels that you can use to check and alter settings. Using this you should be able to print out a status page that will show you the printer's current network settings.

Armed with this information you can check that DHCP is enabled, and that a correct IP address has been assigned, as with a PC. If something's amiss, you should reset the printer following the instructions in the manual.

Printers with a wired network port will have status lights, so you can tell if they're properly connected. Using the techniques described in the main feature, you can use these lights to diagnose a physical fault.

If the problem is with the printer's network port, you'll need to call out an engineer to rectify the problem. If your printer is wireless, follow the setup guide to configure the wireless settings again.

Networked world

It's becoming more common to see lots of other different types of network product, including print servers, to share a printer on the network, and network attached storage (NAS) devices for shared disk space.

For any wired product, check for status lights to confirm that you've got a connection to the network. If you haven't, you should try and change cables and the switch port that they're plugged into. If you can't get any joy and other devices are working, you've probably got a faulty network port.

If this isn't the problem, you'll need to change your settings using the device's web-based management page. If you can't access this or don't know its IP address, don't panic.

Check the device's manual, as it'll tell you how to get hold of this information. Lots of network devices ship with configuration utilities that scour the network and tell you this information. If these don't work, try to reset your device back to its factory defaults. Most will have buttons on the back to do this, but check the manual for the exact steps.

Ping pong

The ping command, as described above, can be used on any network device to confirm that it's on the network. If a device responds to a ping but you still can't access it, there's another problem, and you should try to reset it. If it doesn't respond to a ping, try cycling its power and resetting it to its default settings if the problems persist.