Characteristics of Skilled and Unskilled System Engineers in Troubleshooting for Network Systems

As information and communication technology systems become larger and more complex, system troubleshooting difficulty increases. To date, however, no efficient method for troubleshooting training has been developed owing to a lack of understanding of how skilled system engineers perform troubleshooting. The goal of this study was to investigate and compare the network troubleshooting characteristics of skilled and unskilled system engineers. We hypothesized that to efficiently troubleshoot a network system, skilled system engineers divided the overall network into functional and non-functional sub-networks by confirming connections between network devices using similar method. To observe troubleshooting behavior, we developed a virtual network comprising several servers, routers, and terminals on which a group of six skilled and unskilled system engineers performed normal troubleshooting activities. It was found that the skilled system engineers tended to narrow down the problem space by connection confirmation between network devices. The coincidences of connection confirmation between the skilled system engineers were significantly higher amongst the whole group. At the beginning of the troubleshooting assessment, the most skilled participants appropriately hypothesized which device was experiencing trouble, based on information presented in advance of the assessment. In contrast, the unskilled system engineers, and/or those unfamiliar with network troubleshooting, did not narrow the problem space but instead randomly searched for obstacle causes in selected network devices. These results suggest that unskilled system engineers should be taught methods for the appropriate and logical reduction of the problem space in network troubleshooting.