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Network Fundamentals: Top Picks

Network Fundamentals
The first step in controlling broadcast and multicast traffic is to identify which devices are involved in a broadcast or multicast storm. The follow…
Network Fundamentals
A network is simply a group of two or more Personal Computers linked together. Many types of networks exist, but the most common types of networks ar…
Network Fundamentals
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…
Network Fundamentals
Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and DMZ zones are two critical components of network security that work hand in hand to protect an organization's n…

Featured Subcategories:

Netflow Articles:

Netflow
Monitoring network traffic & bandwidth usage via Netflow is mandatory for any type and size network. Gaining visibility into user traffic, applic…
Netflow
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and Netflow are both popular protocols with admins, prized for their ability to give visibility over the ne…
Netflow
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…
Netflow
This article will cover the basics of Netflow, including its use cases, Netflow supported devices, Netflow history, and variants. We’ll also dive int…

Network Protocols:

TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
Understanding how each protocol fits into the OSI Model is essential for any network engineer. This page analyses how TCP is classified as a 'transpo…
IP Protocol
This article examines the Internet Protocol (IP) and its position within the OSI Model. We take a look at the IP Header and all fields contained with…
Supernetting & CIDR
Supernetting is the opposite of of subnetting, and is also known as route aggregation or CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). Supernetting is a tec…
Domain Name System (DNS)
The previous article covered the DNS Query message formats. In the article we analysed them in great detail and showed how various options are select…
Subnetting
When we subnet a network, we basically split it into smaller networks. For example, when a set of IP Addresses is given to a company, e.g 254 they mi…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
Our fifth section contains some very interesting fields that are used by the TCP transport protocol. We see how TCP helps control how much data is tr…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
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…
Supernetting & CIDR
Our previous article served as an introduction to Supernetting, also known as Route Summarization. We covered the concept of Supernetting, how it wor…

STP/ICMP Protocols:

ICMP Protocol
As mentioned in the previous page, an Echo is simply what we networking engineers call a 'ping'. The Echo Reply is, as most would guess,  the 'p…
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
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
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…
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
Spanning Tree Protocol, Rapid STP port costs and port states are an essential part of the STP algorithm that affect how STP decides to forward or blo…

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VLAN Networks
Dynamic VLANs were introduced to grant the flexibility and complexity(!) that Static VLANs did not provide. Dynamic VLANs are quite rare because of their…
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…
VLAN Networks
While the VLAN Tagging article briefly covered the IEEE 802.1q protocol this article will continue building upon it by further analyzing the IEEE 802.1q T…
VLAN Networks
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…

Routing
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…
Routing
IGRP (Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) is a Cisco proprietary distance-vector routing protocol used in enterprise networks to exchange routing informati…
Routing
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…
Routing
This is the thrid article of our 6-part OSPF series (see below) that describes how OSPF routers perform neighbor relationship and adjacency. We’ll examine…

Network Address Translation - NAT
Our previous article, Dynamic NAT - Part 1, covered the basic idea of Dynamic Network Address Translation. We are now going to take a closer look at the p…
Network Address Translation - NAT
Static NAT (also called inbound mapping) is the first mode we're going to talk about and also happens to be the most uncommon between smaller networks. S…
Network Address Translation - NAT
NAT Overload is the most common NAT method used throughout all networks that connect to the Internet. This is because of the way it functions and the limi…
Network Address Translation - NAT
Dynamic NAT is the second NAT mode we're going to talk about. Dynamic NAT, like Static NAT, is not that common in smaller networks but you'll find it used…