Challenge 1:

Screenshot of successful ping between Foster Laptop and Skiff Laptop (1 Point)

Description of Troubleshooting Approach you started with and the steps your took (1 Point)

My initial approach to troubleshooting was to gather information about the laptop, switch, and router configurations to understanding what I was working with and identify the issue. However, I stumbled upon the fact that laptop 192.168.1.15 did not have a default gateway set and upon setting the default gateway to that of the correct router interface, I found that the issue was solved!

Description of any issues you encountered, mistakes you made, whether another approach would have been better and/or did you combine methods (1 Point)

When testing my ping I initially accidentally made the Foster laptop ping itself because I thought I had selected the other laptop but quickly realized that I was not testing the correct thing. I think my approach was good but would need a different approach if I had not found the issue just through information gathering.

Challenge 2

Screenshot of successful ping between Foster Laptop and Skiff Laptop (1 Point)

Description of Troubleshooting Approach you started with and the steps your took (1 Point)

For this challenge, I immediately noted an area of concern when the skiff switch and router seemed to have a faulty connection. I investigated this problem area and found that the interface on the router did not have an IP address set and was not on. I configured the interface and tried to ping, and the problem was solved!

Description of any issues you encountered, mistakes you made, whether another approach would have been better and/or did you combine methods (1 Point)

My approach was somewhat similar to a divide-and-conquer approach in which I isolated the problem to work on it. The approach worked well since on Packet Tracer there is quite literally a red error when two devices aren't connected properly but this might be slightly different in real life where I would have to test the connection manually between each device.

Screenshot of successful ping between the 10.10.10.0/24 and 20.20.20.0/24 network PC's (1 Point)

Description of Troubleshooting Approach you started with and the steps your took (1 Point)

I started out using a follow-the-path approach. When the initial ping from PC0 to PC4 didn't work, I tried pinging the default gateway, which didn't work either. From there, I checked each individual device and connection to find potential issues. The first issue I found was the use of trunk connections from the switches to the PCs and the router. I checked each interface and changed each one back to access ports. Then, I checked the router configuration and noticed a discrepancy between the interface labels and the actual interface configurations (i.e Fa0/0 was assigned to 20.20.20.1 instead of 10.10.10.1 and vice versa). I also added the two networks to RIPv2 configuration on the router since sometimes internal routing is a bit funny on packet tracer. After making these changes, my pings between the two networks worked.

Description of any issues you encountered, mistakes you made, whether another approach would have been better and/or did you combine methods (1 Point)

I tried to use the simulation tool to pinpoint where things were going wrong, but this proved to not be very helpful in this specific case. I think I could have come to the solution faster if I had focused more on combing through the configurations once I realized that there was something going wrong with the routing from the PCs to the router. I think all in all I did a combination of follow-the-path, top-down, and the divide-and-conquer approach as this was a more complex problem that had multiple problem points.

Screenshot of successful ping between PC1 and PC2 (1 Point)

Description of Troubleshooting Approach you started with and the steps your took (1 Point)

I used the follow-the-path approach again to figure out the crux of the problem- which I hypothesized was due to some static routing mishaps. Knowing this, I gathered info about the network by labelling each interface and network so I could create a routing table and then use spot-the-difference to find any mistakes in the current routing protocol. Doing so, I was able to replace the existing static routes with correct static routes based on the information I gathered.

Description of any issues you encountered, mistakes you made, whether another approach would have been better and/or did you combine methods (1 Point)

At first, I thought the problem was isolated within router 2, but was able to use the simulation tool to decipher that router 3 also had a problematic static route that was not allowing the ping reply to bounce back. I definitely combined the methods of follow-the-approach and spot-the-difference in this troubleshooting challenge as it required me not only figure out where in the chain the problem was occurring but also understanding the entire networks' configuration to properly route the packets.

Screenshot of successful ping between Clinic PC 1 and Guest Laptop 2 (1 Point)

Description of Troubleshooting Approach you started with and the steps your took (1 Point)

Since it worked for the other two, I again started troubleshooting using a follow-the-path approach. The first issue I encountered was at the first switch, where I hypothesized that a possible issue could be the wrong assigned VLANs for the interfaces. After looking into and fixing this issue on both floors, I checked to make sure the trunk ports were all correct as well. I tested if I was able to ping within my VLANs at this point, which I was. I got an error when trying to ping between VLANs but after using the simulation tool it seemed to resolve itself.

Description of any issues you encountered, mistakes you made, whether another approach would have been better and/or did you combine methods (1 Point)

This troubleshooting went smoothly for me as I just reassigned all the interfaces in the most convenient way for me to understand (like, one of the assigned interfaces was Fa0/15 but I reassigned it to Fa0/2 for simplicity). The only issue I encountered was thinking that there might be an issue on the multi-layer switch after I had reconfigured both the other switches but upon trying again I did not get an error so seemingly it was just Packet Tracer being weird. I think I used the right approach for this scenario when I chose to use follow-the-path.