Networking Systems Flashcards
What is the second packet forwarding mechanism?
- Fast switching
- common mechanism which uses a fast switching cache to store the next-hop information
- packet arrives on an interface and is forwarded to the control plane where the CPU searches for a match in the fast-switching cache
- if no match, it is process-switched and forwarded to next interface
- packet flow information stored in fast-switching cache for quick lookup
What happens when a router receives a packet from a network that is destined for another network?
Step 1; de-encapsulates the layer 2 frame header and trailer to expose the layer 3 packet
Step 2; Examines the destination IP address of the IP packet to find the best path in the routing table
Step 3; if the router finds a path to the destination, it encapsulates the layer 3 packet into a new layer 2 frame and forwards it to the sit interface
-After each hop between routers, the layer 3 IP address does not change but the data link address does
What is quad zero?
- 0.0.0.0
- if a packet has no destination it can be sent here
- can also be used to route data that is internet bound
What are some port roles on a switch?
- Root ports – ports closets to the root bridge
- Designated ports – non-root ports permitted to forward traffic
- Alternate and backup ports – blocking state to prevent loops
- Disabled ports – switch port that is shut down
What is the first type of dynamic routing?
Distance vector - means that routes are advertised by providing 2 characteristics;
- Distance = ID’s how far is it to the destination networks based on hop count
- Vector = specifies the direction of the next hop router or exit interface to reach the destination
Four other commands that link to OSPF?
1) “Show ip OSPF neighbour” to verify the router has formed an adjacency with a directly connected router
2) “show ip protocols” to verify the OSPFv2 process ID, router ID, networks being advertised by the router and other things
3) “show ip OSPF interface” to see details for every OSPFv2 enabled interface, especially to see if the network statements were correctly composed
4) “show ip interface brief” command to see key information about OSPFv2 enabled interfaces on a particular router
What are administrative distances?
- possible to have multiple routes to same destination network
- each routing protocol might prefer a different path so router choses by using administrative distance
- represents the trustworthiness of the route, the lower the better
Cons of link-state
- Memory and processing consumption high
- the flooding of link state packets can adversely affect bandwidth
- using multiple areas can reduce the size of the link state DB
- Multiple areas can limit amount of link-state information flooding and send LSPs only to those routers that need them
How does topology relate to OSPF?
- topology used to describe OSPF configuration; defines the area of range of coverage for this protocol
- shows links to external networks
- WAN links
What is the OSPF metric?
- cost = reference bandwidth / interface bandwidth
- lower the better
- can be seen in the routing table in brackets
- instead of manually setting the interface bandwidth, the OSPF cost can be manually configured using the “ip OSPF cost value” command
Draw a diagram showing the communication and transmission of a packet between two nodes A and B when sent using TCP
What is load balancing?
- if router has 2 or more paths with ID metrics to the same destination network the router will forward the packet using both paths equally
- routing table contains a single destination but has multiple exit interfaces
- one for each equal cost path; known as Equal Cost Load Balancing
- increase the effectiveness and performance of the network
Difference between a straight-through cable and cross over cable?
- straight-through is between a computer and a modem, router, switch or other dissimilar networking equipment
- Crossover is between two computers or two similar networking devices
What is DHCP?
- Dynamic host configuration protocol
- responsible for assigning IP address to network nodes
- IP addresses are leased to the node
- can change at anytime between 24 hours to 30 days
- node requests a new IP when lease is up
- very often its the same IP address
What is effective routing based on?
- Adequate bandwidth = must ensure bandwidth can cope with the intended volume of data
- Speed of data transmission = determined by the bandwidth, speed of operation of the NIC and the number of routers and switches involved in the route, causes latency
- Network card speed, number of devices across the network, the volume of traffic, good design
What is latency?
- time it takes to get from source to destination
- could be as result of problems with the transmission medium itself or errors with the routers/switches as each device takes time to examine and change the packet header
What is the 4th layer of the OSI?
- Transport manages end to end message delivery in the network
- Provides both reliable and sequential packet delivery through error recovery and flow control mechanisms (TCP)
- provides unreliable transport as well (UDP)
What is a VLAN trunk?
- Point to point link that carries more than one VLAN
- Links between S1 and S2, and S1 and S3 are configured to transmit traffic coming from VLANs 10, 20, 30 and 99 across the network
- This network could not function without VLAN trunks
What is router on a stick?
- The alternative to inter-VLAN routing
- only one port is configured and operates as a trunk link, connected to a trunked switch port
How can a router learn about the network?
- can learn about indirectly connected router through its connected routers
- information about indirectly connected routers appear as protocol
What is an IPv6 link local address?
- enables a device to communicate with other IPv6 devices on the same link and only on that link (subnet)
- packet with a source or destination link local address cannot be routed beyond the link from where the packet originated -used to exchange OSPFv3 messages
Why cant we end an IP with 255?
-reserved as broadcast address
What is the first IP class?
- Class A
- Start address is 0.0.0.0, end address is 127.255.255.255
- Number of networks is 2^7 -addresses per network is 2^24
What is the physical layer responsible for?
- bit-by-bit delivery = symbol or baud rate is used here to measure how fast something happens (symbol is a pile or tone that represents data)
- Modulation = the process of modulating a signal onto a carrier
- providing a standardisation interface to the medium
- circuit switching
- forward error recovery
What is the second type of dynamic routing?
- Link-state = uses the link state information received from other routers…
- ….To create a topology map and select the best path to all destination networks in the topology
Draw a diagram showing the communication and transmission of a packet between two nodes A and B when sent using UDP
What is the first packet forwarding mechanism?
- process switching, slower and older than others
- the packet arrives on an interface, it is forwarded to the control lane where the CPU then matches the destination address with an entry in its routing table in order to determine the exit interface
- slow as does this for every packet in stream
What are some uses for dynamic routing protocol?
- best choice for large networks
- protocols help administrator manage the network
What are some problems with switches?
- They broadcast, eg; when a new device is connected an ARP is sent out to request info to add to the CAM table
- the request is passed out of every port except the one the packet arrived on
- So, for a 24-port switch, 23 ports will be broadcast
- If your network had 20 switches, that’s a lot of broadcasting (Broadcast domains)
What is VSLM?
- Variable length subnet masks
- more flexible approach than subnetting
- allows for multiple sub network to be addressed out of same address space
- eg; in the same network you may have some /25 addresses and some /27
What is an APIPA address?
- If your device is assigned an IP address that starts 169.254.x.x then it is unable to contact a DHCP server
- it will not be able to communicate with other devices
- automatic private IP addressing
How are router IDS used with OSPF?
- used to uniquely ID an OSPF router
- 32 bits long in both v2 (IPv4) and v3 (IPv6)
- used in the election of the DR if a priority number is not configured
What is BGP
- border gateway protocol
- exterior routing protocol -highly scalable
- Mainly used to connect LAN to the internet or to other networks
- provides loop free routing between autonomous systems
What is the 3rd layer of OSI?
- network manages the transfer of packets that are to be forwarded on to different networks and between nodes on the same network
- routers
What are the two sublayers of the data link layer?
- LLC = logical link control layer
- MAC = media access control layer
What are dead intervals?
- by default are 4 times hello interval
- if the dead interval expires before the router receives a hello packet, OSPF removes that neighbour from its link state DB with info about the down neighbour
What does the structuce of an ethernet header look like?
- Preamble
- Destination MAC Address
- Source MAC Address
- Ethertype
- Data
- FCS
What are some benefits of the OSI?
- reduced complexity = complex problem decomposed into 7 layer
- increased evolution = tech can advance and still integrate with old tech
- guarantees interoperability = ensures data can be transferred between differing computer types, software OS, network and computer hardware
- allows modular engineering = hardware and software can interface well with each other
- standardised interfaces = products can be designed to easily plug into one or more layers of the model
What is a CDN?
-content delivery network refers to the geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of internet connection, doesnt host the site just caches information
What is ethernet?
- Ethernets LAN’s consist of network nodes and interconnecting media
- Network nodes fall into two main classes;
>Data terminal equipment (DTE) = devices that are either the source or the destination of data frames (PC’s, printers, file servers )
>Data communication equipment (DCE) = intermediate network devices that receive and forward frames across the network (NIC’s, modems, repeaters)
-Ineracts with layers 1, 2 and 3 of the OSI model
What is the CAM?
- Content addressable memory table
- has a physical address mapped to the port the destination device is attached to
- when a switch receives an incoming frame with a MAC address that is not found in the CAM table, it floods it to all ports, except the one that received the frame
What is fibre optic
- uses light pulses to transmit data
- Operates over large distances
- has two modes; single (transmit data at 100 GBPs for 100km without signal repeat) and multi-mode (100mbps for 2km)
- immune to electrical interference and cross talk
- each fibre can carry many independent channels with each using a different wavelength of light making it hard to hack
- can bend around 3cm before fractures appear
What is an easier way to work out network address?
- just look at whole address
- 10.10.10.10 255.0.0.0 has to be 10.0.0.0 as the first bits are all turned to 1 (two 1’s means 1 is carried down) and the rest are 0’s (0 carried with anything is 0)
- 172.16.25.14 255.255.0.0 has to be 172.16.0.0
What is the 2nd layer of the OSI?
- data link provides a reliable link between two directly connected devices
- switches
- uses MAC addresses
- error detection = prevents collisions
- PPP = point to point protocol
What is a routing table?
- stored in RAM it contains all the available routes
- ID’s the next hop for remote networks
- directly connected = obtained from the active router interfaces
- remote networks = statically configured or learned from dynamic routing protocols
What are the 3 ways signals can get damaged?
Attenuation - data loss (usually as a result of the cable going beyond its effective range)
Dispersion - signal flattens out and widens due to interference
Distortion - signal completely changes due to interferences
Why do we have DR/BDR election?
- reduce the number of LSAs sent
- the DR is the only router used to send LSAs for the shared network
- reduce the number of advances over a multi-access network like ethernet
What is IS-IS
- creates a map of a network and uses it to calculate shortest path to destination
- uses areas
What is the 5th layer of the OSI?
- Manages communication between applications after a connection is made
- session inter-host communication = sets up, maintains and closes a session
- provides an open communication path with another system
What is routing protocol?
- AIDS routers by dynamically learning paths to routes and other networks
- OSPF = open shortest path first
- RIP = Routing Information protocol
- BGP = border gateway protocol
- IS-IS = intermediate system to intermediate system
What are standards?
- Define the rules for the protocols to communicate effectively
- Required to ensure full compatibility and interoperability between devices
What is the process of ARP?
- switch receives a packet which contains an un ID MAC address
- ARP then broadcasts an ARP request to request information about the known IP address (we have the IP, so whoever’s IP this is has the MAC)
- all hosts receive the broadcasted frame
- if there is a match the matching device will send the required information; unicast
- MAC information is updated in the MAC address table and that port is associated with that device If no match the ARP is discarded
What is bandwidth? What is Broadband?
- A measure of the amount of data that can be sent over a connection; max transmission capacity
- Allows data to be sent on multiple channels simultaneously. Broadens the available bandwidth (date/second)
Pros and cons of TCP?
Pros;
- Reliable
- Guarantees data will be sent and received
- Makes sure correct ordering is maintained
Cons;
-Slower
what is a loop?
- when a signal path has the same source and destination address
- result in signal amplifying itself rather than stopping at a destination
- causes network performance issues due to the constant amplification
why do we use private IP addresses?
- Instead of having devices inside a home network each use a public IP address, of which there’s a limited supply, private IP addresses provide a separate set of addresses that still allow access on a network but without taking up a public IP address space
- Private IP addresses also provide a way for devices that don’t need contact with the internet, like file servers and printers, to still communicate with other devices on a network without being exposed to the public.
What are hello packet intervals?
-hello and dead intervals must be the same interval setting on neighbouring routers on the same link -
transited to multicast address 224.0.0.5 in IPv4 and FF02::5 in IPv6
- sent every 10 seconds by default on multi access networks like ethernet and point-point links
- sent every 30 seconds by default on non-broadcasts multiple access networks like frame relay
what are the ranges for private IP addresses?
- 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
- 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
- 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
What does the OSI model address?
- To interconnect equipment made by different manufacturers through a standard interface
- To integrate software and hardware and to be portable on differing systems
- create a model which will be adhered to by all countries of the world
What is copper cable? Difference between twisted pair and coaxial cable?
- copper is most common and cheapest form of network cable
- it is easy to install modify and manage
- coaxial is much slower, less flexible and used for TV Ariels
- Twisted pair has less insulation and shielding, comes in categories with the higher categories being better (Cat I and II are used for telephone lines, cat VI is used for high speed internet)
When do routers use routing tables?
-router only uses routing table if destination IP not directly connected
What is the OSI model?
- Theoretical 7 layer model
- headed up by international organisation for standardisation
- We are concerned with layers 1-4 and a little bit of 5