Employees report that the network is slow. The network engineer thinks the performance issue is with an upstream router. Which of the following tools should the engineer use to determine the location of the issue?
To determine where slowness is occurring—especially if an upstream router is suspected—the best tools are ping and tracert/traceroute. Network+ (N10-009) troubleshooting objectives emphasize using these to test connectivity, latency, and the path packets take through the network. Ping measures reachability and round-trip time; rising latency or packet loss can indicate congestion or a failing link/device. Tracert identifies each hop along the route and reports per-hop response times, helping pinpoint whether delays begin at a specific hop (for example, the default gateway, the upstream router, or a provider edge). This allows the engineer to localize the problem area and decide whether the issue is internal, at the upstream router, or beyond.
nslookup and dig are DNS tools; they diagnose name resolution, not general network slowness location. Nmap focuses on scanning ports/hosts, and a “speed tester” measures throughput but does not locate the failing hop. tcpdump and protocol analyzer can reveal retransmissions, windowing, or application behavior, but they are not the fastest first-choice tools for locating an upstream routing/performance bottleneck across hops. Hence, tracert and ping are the correct pair.
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