Cisco 1 Network Fundamentals

Study Guide
Chapter 1: Living in a network-centric world
Objectives
1. Describe how networks impact our daily lives
Networks present a platform on which to run business, address emergencies,
form individual opinions and support education, science and government.
2. Describe the role of data networking in the human network
Data networks and human networks use similar procedures to ensure that
their communication gets to the destination accurately and on time.
3. Identify the key components of any data network
A. Four Elements of a Network:
1. Rules
2. Medium
3. Messages
4. Devices
B. Common Network intermediary Devices:
Switch - the most common device for interconnecting local area networks
Firewall - provides security to networks
Router - helps direct messages as they travel across a network
Wireless Router - a specific type of router often found in home networks
Cloud - used to summarize a group of networking devices, the details of
which may be unimportant to the discussion at hand
Serial Link - one form of WAN interconnection, represented by the lightning
bolt-shaped line
C. Networks are either wired or wireless. All wireless networks are
connected to a wired network at some point.
a. In wired connections, the medium is either copper, which
carries electrical signals, or optical fiber, which carries light
signals. Copper medium includes cables, such as twisted pair
telephone wire, coaxial cable, or most commonly, what is
known as Category 5 Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable.
Optical fibers, thin strands of glass or plastic that carry light
signals, are another form of networking media.
b. In wireless connections, the medium is the Earth's
atmosphere, or space, and the signals are microwaves.
Wireless media may include the home wireless connection
between a wireless router and a computer with a wireless

network card, the terrestrial wireless connection between

two ground stations, or the communication between devices
on earth and satellites.
D. Protocols are rules that networked devices use to communicate
with each other. The industry standard is TCP/IP (Transmission
Control/internet Protocol).
E. *Chart shows common protocols and services**
Service
World Wide Web
E-mail
Instant Message (Jabber, AIM)

IP Telephony

Protocol (rule)
HTTP (Hypertext transport protocol)
SMTP (Simple mail Transport Protocol)
POP (Post Office Protocol)
XMPP (Extensible Messaging and
Presence Protocol)
OSCAR (Open System for
Communication in Realtime
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)

4. Identify the opportunities and challenges posed by converged networks

Opportunity: The flow of voice, video, and data traveling over the same network
eliminates the need to create and maintain separate networks. Reduced cost.
Challenges: On a converged network there are still many points of contact and
many specialized devices
5. Describe the characteristics of network architectures:
A. Fault tolerance: Redundant connections allow for alternate paths if a
device or link fails. The user experience is unaffected.
B. Scalability: A scalable network can expand quickly to support new users
and applications without impacting the performance of the service being
delivered to existing users.
C. Quality of Service: Quality of audio and video services is measured
against the quality of experiencing the same audio or video presentation in
person. Video and streaming media require a higher quality of service and
priority, while things like web-pages receive lower priority.
D. Security: The security and privacy expectations that result from the use
of internetworks to exchange confidential and business critical information
have greatly increased. There are many tools and procedures are being
implemented to combat inherent security flaws in the network architecture.
6. Install and use IRC clients and a Wiki server.

Vocabulary
1.
2.
3.
4.

Applications: A complete software program designed for end users.

Authentication: A process whereupon a person must prove that they are legitimate users of that cer
Binary: A numbering system characterized by ones and zeros (1 = on and 0 = off)
Bits: Binary digit, taking a value of either a 1 or 0. Binary digits are units of information storage
and communication in computing.
5. CheckSum: A checksum is a form of redundancy check, in a simple way to protect the integrity
of data by detecting errors in data that are sent through space (telecommunications) or time
(Storage). It works by adding up the basic components of a message, typically asserted bits,
and storing the resulting value. Anyone can later perform the same operation on the data,
compare the result to the authentic checksum, and (assuming that the sums match) conclude
that the message was probably not corrupted.
6. Cloud (SYMBOL): The cloud symbol is used to represent network communications without
showing specific details of the network architecture. The cloud typically is used to hide the
details of Layer 1 and Layer 2.
7. Coaxial: Components that share a common axis. In the case of Coaxial cable there are 3
different material surrounding the inner conducting material. The outer conductor, the insulator
and the protective outer jacket.
8. Collaboration Tool: Something that helps people work together on a particular file or piece of
software. Many people use the term collaboration tool in a software context, for instance
collaboration software such as google docs, Microsoft sharepoint server.
9. Computer virus: A computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without
permission or knowledge of the user.
10.Converged Network: A network that allows for voice, video and data to use the same IP
network.
11.Data network: Digital networks used to send data between computers.
12.Digital Signature: A type of asymmetric cryptography used to simulate the security properties of
a signature in digital form rather than written form.
13.Download: Transferring data (usually a file) form another computer to the computer you are
using.
14.E-mail: Electronic Mail (abbreviated e-mail or email) is a store and forward method of
composing, sending, storing and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.
15.End-to-End: End user devices to end user devices.
16.Extranet: Part of a companys intranet that is extended to users outside the company (e.g.
normally over the internet)
17.Firewall: a hardware device or a software application designed to protect network devices from
outside network users and/or malicious applications and files.
18.Flow: Stream of data traveling between two endpoints across a network (for example from one
LAN station to another) multiple flows can be transmitted on a single circuit.
19.Hardware: Physical components of a computer, such as the hard drive, memory ship,
motherboard, CPU, etc.
20.Hash algorithm: Reproducible method of turning some kind of data into a (relatively) small
number that may serve as a digital fingerprint of the data. The algorithm shops and mixes
(i.e. substitutes or transposes) the data to create such fingerprints, called hash values.
21.Instant messaging: Real-time communication between two or more people via text or other
data.

22.Internet: a publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data
by using IP, the internet protocol.
23.Internetwork: The interconnection of two or more different networks.
24.Media: Plural form of medium
25.Medium: a physical medium in which data in transferred. For example UTP is a form of
networking media.
26.Network: A network is multiple computers connected together using a communications system.
The purpose of a network is for computers to communicate and share files.
27.Packet: Logical grouping of information that includes a header containing control information
and (usually) user data. Packets are most often used to refer to network layer units of data. The
terms datagram, frame, message, and segment are also used to describe logical information
groupings at various layers of the OSI reference model and in various technology circles.
28.Podcasting: Podcast is a digital media file or files that are distributed over the Internet using
syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
29.Point of failure: Describes any part of the system that can, if it fails, cause an interruption of
required service.
30.Process: A series of progressive and interdependent steps which an end is attained.
31.QOS: a control mechanism that can provide different priority to different users or data flows, or
guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow in accordance with requests from the
application program.
32.Real-Time: Events of signals that show output as fast as possible or as they happen.
33.Router: Network layer device that uses one of more metrics to determine the optimal path along
which network traffic should be forwarded. Routers forward packets from one network to
another based on network later information.
34.Routing: Processes of finding a path to a destination host. Routing is very complex in large
networks because of many potential intermediate destinations a packet might traverse before
reaching its destination host.
35.Server: A computer that provides services to clients. Servers are the central point in
client/server model networks. There exist many services that a server can provide to network
clients. For example: DNS, DHCP. File storage, Application hosting and website hosting.
36.Software: Program or codes used by computer to carry out certain functions.
37.Source: The origin of the message
38.Standard: An internationally recognized definition of technical specifications that ensure
worldwide consistency
39.Stream: The continuous transmission of data from on location to another. For example a
streaming video is a continuous real-time flow of the video being downloaded as you watch the
video.
40.TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Common name for the suite of protocols
developed by the US DOD in the 1970s to support the construction of worldwide internetworks.
TCP and IP are the 2 best known protocol in the suite.
41.UTP: A four-pair wire medium used in a variety of networks. UTP does not require the fixed
spacing between connections that is necessary with coaxial-type connections. There are 5 types
of UTP cabling commonly used: Category 1, Category 2, Category 3, Category 4, and Category
5.
42.Wiki: a website that lets visitors add, edit and delete content, typically without the need of
registration. A good example of this is a site called Wikipedia where visitors can access the
website and add their commentaries to already written articles or create a new article.
43.Wireless Technology: Technology that allows for communication without needing physically
connectivity. Examples of wireless technology include cellular phones, personal digital

assistants (PDAs), Wireless access points and wireless NICs.

Quiz
1. Which form of communication is a real time text-based communication type
used between two or more people who use mostly text to communicate with
each other?
a. Weblogs
b. Wikis
c. Instant Messaging
d. Podcasting
e. Collaboration Tools
2. Which type of network provides customers limited access to corporate data
such as inventory, part lists and order?
a. Intranet
b. Extranet
c. Internetwork
d. Internet
3. What balances the importance of traffic and its characteristics in order to
manage data?
a. Network administration
b. Network traffic
c. QOS Strategy
d. Network evaluation
4. Which processes occur to network traffic so that quality of service strategies
work correctly? (choose two)
a. Traffic is classified on quality of service requirements
b. Priorities are assigned to each classification of application data
c. Web traffic is always assigned to a high priority queue for processing
d. Digital movies are always assigned to the high priority queue for
processing
e. Email traffic is always assigned to the low priority queue
5. What are two components of network architecture? (Choose two)
a. People that comprise the human network
b. Programmed services and protocols that move the messages across
the network
c. Data transferred across the network
d. Technologies that support network communications
e. Corporations that operate and maintain the data network
6. For which 3 reasons were circuit-switched, connection-oriented technologies
rejected when the Internet was being developed? (Choose three)
a. Circuit-switched technologies required that a single message be broken
up into multiple message blocks that contain addressing information
b. Early circuit-switched networks did not automatically establish
alternative circuits in the event of circuit failure.
c. Circuit-Switched technologies required that an open circuit between
network endpoints to be established, even if data was not actively
being transferred between locations.

d. The quality and consistency of messages transmitted across a

connection-oriented, circuit-switched network could not be guaranteed.
e. The establishment of multiple, simultaneous open circuits for fault
tolerance was costly.
7. For which three reasons was packet-switched connectionless data
communications technology used when developing the Internet (choose 3)
a. It can rapidly adapt to the loss of data transmission facilities
b. It efficiently utilizes the network infrastructure to transfer data
c. Data packets can travel multiple paths through the network
simultaneously
d. It allows for billing of network use by the amount of time a connection
is established
e. It requires that a data circuit between the source and destination be
established before data can be transferred.
8. What is the role of QOS in a converged network?
a. Ensures that all traffic above available bandwidth levels is dropped
b. Establishes delivery priorities for different communication types in a
network
c. Determines precise priorities for all network communication
d. Allows unused bandwidth to be shared by other organizations within
the network.
9. Match the characteristic of a network architecture with their definitions by
dragging the options on the left to the targets on the right (not all options are
used)
a. Fault tolerance

Limits the impact of hardware or

software failures recovery mechanisms
b. Scalability
Supports expansion of the network
infrastructure to support new users and
applications
c. Quality of service
Provides a level of consistent and
uninterrupted data delivery to support
expectations of users
d. Security
Protects confidential and business
critical information from theft or
alteration
10. Network security threats can be classified as relating to either network
infrastructure security or content security. Classify the security threats on the
left by dragging them into the appropriate category on the right.

Network infrastructure
Security
a hacker connects to a
network device and
changes settings in its
management software
builders accidental cut
a network cable while
digging
a custodian unplugs an
essential network
device

Content Security
a secretary sends
confidential information
in reply to an e-mail
that falsely appears to
come from her boss
a disgruntled employee
alters information in a
customer database
a competitor accesses
sensitive information
through an unsecured
wireless network