When it comes to diagnosing a connection issue between two offices. You want to narrow down a couple of variables first. A good place to start would be looking at is it only affecting certain users? Are these users on VPN or the internal LAN? Do the internet connection issues occur at a certain time of day and are they affecting the primary internet source and the backup? Once these questions are answered the next step would be determining which location to start looking for issues in. Since Austin is the headquarters and only Minneapolis is complaining about the intermittent connection issues it would be best to start with the Minneapolis network.

First thing that could be done would be a to ping the main modem or router within the Minneapolis office. Ping -t would allow you to monitor it for a little bit to see if the packets are failing going or coming. If during your testing, there is no definitive for issues in or out. The next step would be to check the network cabling to ensure there are no frays or loose connections. Could even attempt to change out the LAN cable from the main modem to the primary router. After running the ping test and checking the cables we would talk with Austin to see if they have been seeing any internet drops throughout the day. If Austin is not seeing any drops, then we have narrowed it down to the LAN or possibly VLAN in Minneapolis. More than likely it will be a configuration issue within the main LAN. Now that the issue is narrowed down to Minneapolis it would be wise to look at the help desk tickets that have been submitted to see if it is certain users or equipment that are mainly dropping connection. After determining which users are affected the next step would be to check the configuration of their network cards to ensure it has the proper configuration settings for the LAN also checking their account access on the network. If all that checks out the final step would be checking the cabling at their desks to ensure there is not an incorrect patch cable or drop run. If they are primarily VLAN users and the majority are having issues. Checking the health of the VLAN and also the configuration would be the last step to take to ensure a solid connection between both locations.