Tech

techAdmin

There are some very good networking tools available. Give them a try.
System Tools

NMap. The father of them all, a great network scanner for establishing the security of your network configuration. Scans open ports and much more. The linux version is better than the Windows version, for obvious reasons.
Ethereal. Network protocol and activity analyzer.

System Commands

Windows: command line:
ipconfig
requires command line arguments, eg:
ipconfig /all
returns all ip configuration for host.
Linux, Windows: command line:
ping domainname or IP address
ex: ping techpatterns.com
returns ip address of domain name, time to connect. Tests if connections are working to other machines.
Windows: command line:
tracert
traces route to ip or domain name. eg:
tracert techpatterns.com
returns the network paths followed from your machine to the server.
Linux: command line:
traceroute
ex: traceroute techpatterns.com
Much faster than the windows version, may require installing the traceroute utility.