Network Fundamentals: Top Picks
DoS & DDoS Attacks
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of a website, server or network by flooding it with traffic…
Media Access Control - MAC Addresses
A MAC address, or Media Access Control address, is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network addres…
Need for Speed – The Data Tsunami & Advancements…
A long-long time ago (not long ago in earth time) 100 Mbps was THE technology. 100 Mbps uplinks bundled with ether-channel was the ultimate uplink te…
Network Unicast - Its role and Importance
Unicast is a communication method used in computer networking where data is sent from a single sender to a specific destination device. In this…
Featured Subcategories:
Netflow Articles:
Netflow vs SNMP. Two Different Approaches to Netw…
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and Netflow are both popular protocols with admins, prized for their ability to give visibility over the ne…
NetFlow Analyzer: Free Download, Step-by-Step Ins…
In our previous article we explained how a Netflow Analyzer can help you gain visibility into your user traffic, application traffic and data flows w…
Complete Guide to Netflow: How Netflow & its Comp…
This article will cover the basics of Netflow, including its use cases, Netflow supported devices, Netflow history, and variants. We’ll also dive int…
Netflow: Monitor Bandwidth & Network Utilization…
Monitoring network traffic & bandwidth usage via Netflow is mandatory for any type and size network. Gaining visibility into user traffic, applic…
Network Protocols:
UDP Protocol - Header
This article covers the UDP protocol. We examine the structure of the UDP header, the protocols that use UDP as a transport plus a lot more.
Some co…
TCP Header Anaylsis - Section 7: TCP Data Payload…
Finally, the last page of our incredible TCP Analysis. As most of you would expect, this section is dedicated to the DATA section that follows the TC…
Transmission Control Protocol - Part 4: In-Depth…
This article is an introduction to the 7-page TCP Header analysis section that follows. We briefly view each section of the TCP Header and then move…
TCP Header Anaylsis - Section 6: TCP Options
The TCP Options (MSS, Window Scaling, Selective Acknowledgements, Timestamps, Nop) are located at the end of the TCP Header which is also why they ar…
The DNS Protocol - Part 3: DNS Query Message Form…
This section will deal with the analysis of the DNS packets by examining how DNS messages are formatted and the options and variables they contain. T…
IP Subnetting - Part 4: Routing Between Subnets
Routing and Communication between subnets is the main topic here. This article analyses communications between subnets. We provide examples on differ…
IP Subnetting - Part 2: Subnet Masks & Their Effe…
There are a few different ways to approach subnetting and it can get confusing because of the complexity of some subnets and the flexibility they off…
Transmission Control Protocol - Part 3: The TCP H…
This article shows the TCP Header and Segment. We explain where the TCP Header and Segment are located in an Ethernet frame and also briefly view the…
STP/ICMP Protocols:
ICMP Protocol - Part 6: Redirect Messages
The ICMP - Redirect Message is always sent from a gateway to the host and the example below will illustrate when this is used.
Putting it simply (be…
ICMP Protocol - Part 1: Introduction
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), is a very popular protocol and actually part of an Internet Protocol (IP) implementation. Because IP wa…
Spanning Tree Protocol – Part 1: Understand STP P…
One of the most used terms in network is LAN (Local Area Network). It’s a form of network that we encounter in our daily lives, at home, at work, stu…
ICMP Protocol - Part 7: Time Exceeded Message Ana…
The ICMP - Time Exceeded message is one which is usually created by gateways or routers. In order to fully understand this ICMP message, you must be…
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Comparing Traditional Flat & VLAN Networks
Designing and building a network is not a simple job. VLANs are no exception to this rule, in fact they require a more sophisticated approach because of t…
Static VLANs
VLANs are usually created by the network administrator, assigning each port of every switch to a VLAN. Depending on the network infrastructure and securit…
VLAN InterSwitch Link (ISL) Protocol Analysis
Deciding whether to use ISL or IEEE 802.1q to power your trunk links can be quite confusing if you cannot identify the advantages and disadvantages of eac…
Dynamic VLANs
Dynamic VLANs were introduced to grant the flexibility and complexity(!) that Static VLANs did not provide. Dynamic VLANs are quite rare because of their…
OSPF - Part 5: Analysis of OSPF Link State Update (LSU…
This article explains how OSPF uses Link State Advertisement (LSA) to exchange information about the network topology between routers. When a router recei…
Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol - EIGRP
Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), similar to IGRP, is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol that is used to exchange routing information…
Routing Information Protocol - RIP
Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a distance-vector routing protocol that is commonly used in small to medium-sized networks. It is one of the o…
OSPF - Part 4: OSPF Neighbor States – OSPF Neighbor Fo…
This is the third article of our OSPF series which analyzes the different OSPF States routers go through during the OSPF discovery and neighbor forming pr…