I recently worked on a “Wi-Fi issue” that came in with very little detail — just a note that a hallway was having connectivity problems.

A cursory examination showed all access points were online, and clients were connected with valid IP addresses. To gain deeper insight, I ran a network-wide packet capture and focused on DNS traffic. That’s when I noticed clients weren’t using the correct DNS server.

Filtering for DHCP packets confirmed the source — the DHCP server was handing out the wrong DNS address. Since I don’t manage DHCP, I reached out to that team. Within 20 minutes, they confirmed and corrected the configuration. All clients needed after that was a DHCP renewal.

The environment is large and diverse with multiple DNS servers providing their services to varying devices depending on context.

The takeaway? Context saves time. Without knowing what the correct DHCP settings should be, this issue could have taken hours longer — or even required a truck roll.

If you want to become a better troubleshooter, take the time to truly understand your environment. The more context you have, the faster (and smarter) your resolutions will be.