Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Get exam-ready with the CompTIA Cloud+ Audio Course — your complete, on-demand companion for mastering every domain of the CompTIA Cloud+ (CV0-003) certification. Each episode takes you deep into the essentials of cloud architecture, deployment, operations, security, and troubleshooting, breaking down complex topics into clear, practical explanations you can put to use right away. Designed for busy professionals and aspiring cloud specialists alike, this course helps you build true technical confidence—whether you’re listening during your commute, workout, or study time.
The CompTIA Cloud+ certification validates the hands-on skills required to deploy, optimize, and secure mission-critical cloud environments across multiple platforms. It covers five major areas: Cloud Architecture and Design, Security, Deployment, Operations and Support, and Troubleshooting. Unlike entry-level cloud exams focused on a single provider, Cloud+ emphasizes vendor-neutral, performance-based knowledge—ensuring you can design resilient, efficient, and secure cloud infrastructures in any environment. Ideal for system administrators, cloud engineers, and network professionals, it’s the credential that bridges traditional IT and modern hybrid-cloud operations.
Developed by BareMetalCyber.com, the CompTIA Cloud+ Audio Course is part of a growing collection of prepcasts and study tools that make certification mastery both accessible and enjoyable. Explore more audio courses, companion textbooks, and real-world practice resources across the Bare Metal Cyber ecosystem, and discover how effortless it can be to learn, retain, and apply advanced cloud concepts from the first episode to exam day success.
When cloud services go down or slow to a crawl, the fastest way to begin troubleshooting is often with basic command-line network tools. These tools are built into most operating systems and provide immediate feedback about connectivity, resolution, and the state of system interfaces. Whether you're troubleshooting an isolated virtual machine or diagnosing a multi-region cloud deployment, using these tools effectively helps pinpoint where the failure occurs—at the endpoint, in the network, or beyond. In this episode, we explore the most useful network diagnostic commands available on the command line and how they help isolate cloud connectivity issues.
The Cloud Plus certification exam expects candidates to recognize output from tools like ping, traceroute, nslookup, netstat, and similar utilities. You may be presented with logs or terminal outputs showing failed pings, slow route traces, or invalid DNS results and asked to interpret what they mean. It is not enough to memorize what each tool does. You must understand when to use each tool, what its results imply, and how its information fits into the overall process of troubleshooting cloud service behavior. In real environments, command-line tools provide the first layer of visibility into system state.
Ping is often the first tool used to verify basic network reachability. It works by sending ICMP echo requests to a target system and measuring how long it takes to receive a reply. If ping succeeds, the target is reachable and responsive. High latency values suggest congestion or long paths, while dropped packets may indicate packet loss or intermediate filtering. If ping fails entirely, it may mean the host is down, unreachable, or blocking ICMP. Ping does not confirm application availability, but it is a fast and simple test of connectivity between systems.
Traceroute, or tracert in some systems, maps the path that a packet takes from the source system to a destination. It shows each hop along the path and how long it took to reach each one. This allows administrators to identify where traffic is being delayed or dropped. For example, if traceroute times out at a certain hop, that router may be the source of the failure. Large jumps in latency also help pinpoint bottlenecks. Cloud professionals use traceroute to differentiate between issues occurring at the local level and those happening deeper in the network path.
The IP command on Linux or the IPConfig tool on Windows reveals how local network interfaces are configured. These tools display your assigned IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server information. They are essential for confirming whether your system has received the correct IP configuration from a DHCP server or whether static settings have been applied correctly. Misconfigured interfaces may have incorrect gateways, missing DNS addresses, or overlapping subnets, all of which cause connectivity problems that these tools can help surface.
DNS troubleshooting often starts with NSLookup or Dig. These tools send queries to DNS servers to determine whether a name can be resolved to an IP address. They reveal which DNS server responded, what record types were returned, and how long each response is cached. Candidates should know how to use these tools to test A records for standard lookups, AAAA for IPv6, CNAME for aliases, MX for mail routing, and PTR for reverse lookups. If name resolution fails, the tools help determine whether the issue lies in the DNS server, the zone configuration, or the network path to the resolver.
Netstat is a utility that displays active network connections on a system. It shows which TCP or UDP ports are open, what services are listening, and the current state of each socket. For example, a service in the TIME_WAIT state may be closing connections, while one in ESTABLISHED is actively transmitting data. Netstat is useful for detecting whether a local service is running and accessible or whether the system is overloaded with too many connections. In cloud scenarios, it helps confirm that applications are listening on the expected ports and addresses.
Curl and Wget are command-line tools used to interact with HTTP and HTTPS services. Curl can send requests to APIs and view the full response, including status codes, headers, and content. Wget is similar but often used for downloading files or automating batch downloads. Both tools are invaluable when debugging whether a cloud endpoint is accessible. If the service responds with a 200 OK, it is functioning. If the response is a 403, 404, or 500-level code, that reveals more specific details about the failure. These tools help simulate client requests at the application layer.
Telnet and Netcat are useful for testing whether a TCP port is open and responding. While Telnet is more common on older systems, Netcat is more flexible and can be used to craft packets or initiate connections to arbitrary ports. These tools help verify firewall rules and validate that services are listening as expected. If a port is open, the connection succeeds. If it is closed, the attempt is refused or times out. Netcat also allows for testing custom payloads, which can assist in debugging non-standard protocols or services that use specific headers or handshakes.
Interface state monitoring can be performed using Ifconfig or IP Link on Unix-based systems. These tools reveal whether a network interface is active, its MAC address, and whether it is up or down. They also help detect flapping interfaces, where a network device repeatedly disconnects and reconnects. Administrators use these tools to check whether a system is physically connected to the network, whether the driver is loaded correctly, and whether the link is operating at the expected speed and duplex settings. These tools offer low-level insight that is essential when troubleshooting unpredictable connectivity.
For more cyber related content and books, please check out cyber author dot me. Also, there are other prep casts on Cybersecurity and more at Bare Metal Cyber dot com.
Packet captures offer the most granular view of network traffic. Tools like Tcpdump and Wireshark allow administrators to capture packets as they traverse the network interface, revealing full protocol headers, payloads, and timing information. Tcpdump operates in the command line and is ideal for filtered captures. Wireshark provides a graphical interface for deep analysis. These tools are especially useful for identifying retransmissions, handshake failures, malformed packets, or unexpected protocol behavior. Filters can isolate traffic by IP, port, or protocol, helping narrow down the cause of complex or intermittent problems at the packet level.
Major cloud providers offer their own diagnostic tools that simulate and trace traffic flows through virtual infrastructure. Examples include AWS Reachability Analyzer, Azure Network Watcher, and the GCP Network Intelligence Center. These tools allow administrators to test whether traffic should flow between two resources, based on current configuration. They simulate routes, firewall rules, NAT behavior, and security policies without requiring live packet flow. Candidates must understand when to escalate from basic command-line tools to these platform-native utilities, especially when dealing with issues that span cloud routing tables and service mesh boundaries.
When name resolution problems arise, it is important to compare internal and external behavior. A name that resolves correctly from the public internet may fail when queried from inside the cloud, especially if private zones override or shadow public entries. Similarly, internal-only names may resolve inside the VPC but return no result externally. Tools like dig or nslookup should be used from both internal and external systems to confirm whether the expected resolution behavior is consistent. Discrepancies between resolution paths can break applications that rely on consistent endpoint discovery.
Maximum Transmission Unit mismatches can silently break services. Large packets that exceed the MTU of any device along the path may be dropped if fragmentation is disabled. Ping tests with the "do not fragment" option and varying packet sizes help detect the path MTU. If the test fails at a certain size, that value defines the upper limit. APIs or VPN tunnels are especially vulnerable to MTU issues because they often carry large or encapsulated payloads. When debugging slow or failed uploads, packet loss, or unresponsive APIs, MTU should be tested and reduced as needed.
Most network diagnostic tools include timestamps or timing data in their output. These timestamps are important for correlating tool output with logs from the operating system, application stack, or centralized monitoring. Output from ping, traceroute, or curl can be redirected into log files and later included in incident reports. This documentation is useful for establishing a timeline of events, validating response delays, or confirming when service recovery occurred. Syncing tool output with system clocks and centralized log collection ensures traceability and accurate root cause analysis.
In automated environments, basic network tools can be scripted to run continuously or on demand. Bash, PowerShell, and Python scripts can include ping, curl, netstat, and similar commands as part of system health checks. These scripts may run at startup, on schedule, or when triggered by monitoring alerts. Candidates should understand how to write, test, and document these routines for reuse. Automated diagnostics reduce the time to detect problems and support auto-remediation when combined with orchestration or monitoring frameworks.
Not all tool output should be accepted at face value. Some tools provide misleading results under certain conditions. For instance, ping may fail if ICMP is blocked, even though TCP or UDP communication works. Netstat may show stale connections that remain after a service shuts down. Telnet may indicate a port is open, but that does not confirm the application is responsive. Candidates must confirm findings using multiple tools and consider the context of the test. When output conflicts, deeper tools or broader testing is often required to draw accurate conclusions.
Command-line tool results must always be correlated with the symptoms presented by the application. For example, if ping succeeds but curl fails, the issue likely lies in the application layer or in DNS resolution. If curl works but traceroute shows delay, the bottleneck may be further along the network path. Candidates must be able to layer their analysis, starting from reachability, through resolution, connection state, and finally application response. This layered approach helps build a complete picture of the service behavior under investigation.
To use network diagnostic tools effectively, follow a progression. Start with lightweight tools such as ping or nslookup to test connectivity and resolution. Then escalate to tools like curl, netstat, or traceroute to explore more deeply. If needed, capture packets with tcpdump or analyze behavior with cloud-native tools. Always log the output, timestamp the test, and match it to incident records. Cloud Plus candidates must master these utilities across both Linux and Windows environments and know how to interpret their results within real cloud topologies and hybrid infrastructures.