Low Tech Integrity of Data Transmission Test
A friend showed me this. I have had to use it a couple of times.
Situation: Weird intermittent network errors, file corruption, applications crashing on workstations. No network diagnostic tools.
Low Tech Test: Create a large (several Mb) text file in Wordpad -- all zeros. Suck it back and forth through network connections. Open file and seach for ones (1) after each transmission.
This cheap test has helped me narrow down problems to individual bad NICs when no other resources were available..