Basics:

1. Define Computer Network? 'Computer Network'' to mean a collection of autonomous computers interconnected by a single technology. Two computers are said to be interconnected if they are able to exchange information.
2. What are Computer Network Goals and applications?

Resource sharing high reliability saving money LAN Access to remote programs from other computers. Access to remote databases frmo servers or other computers. Video conferencing File sharing Client server architecture E-mail E-Commerce 3. Differentiate between OSI & TCP/IP model ?
4. What is a VLAN?What does VLAN provide? 5. What is the difference between hub,switch and router? What are the types of Transmission media? 6. What is the difference between physical address and logical address? 7. Under what situations a packet can go into infinite loop in a network ? 8. What is Proxy ARP? 9. Describe a 3-way TCP/IP Handshake. 10.WHAT IS MEAN BY DNS(DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM)AND WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF IT? 11.What is the difference between TFTP and FTP application layer protocols? 12. What is the difference between ckt and packet switching

13. What are design issues of Network layer 14. What are different routing algorithms 15. Differentiate intra and inter domain protocol

16. What are congestion control algorithma 17. What are leaky bucket and token algo. 18. Define ICMP, What are different error messages. 19. Explain IP classful addressing 20. Define subnet, supernet, default mask. 21. Define MPLS, How it works 22. Define DHCP. 23. Explain multiplexing in transport layer 24. Define Socket? What are different types of Socket. 25. Differentiate ip and UDP? 26. Differentiate TCP and UDP? 27. Differentiate ARP & RARP?\ 28. Differentiate BOOTP & DHCP? 29. Differentiate IP & TCP 30. Differentiate Persistent and non Persistent? 31. Differentiate POP3 & IMAP4? 32. What are different application layer protocols? 33. What are different multimedia networking applications 34. What is Bluetooth? 35. Define Piconet, Scatternet? 36. Why ATM? 37. Why ATM uses small cell size? 38. What are ATM Layers? 39. What are different DOS commands? 40. What is purpose of Wireshark? 41. What is use of NS2? 42. Explain TCP and UDP socket? 43. What is EGP? 44. What is piggy backing?

ARP - Q&A
Questions What is ARP? To which OSI layer does ARP belong? Which RFC specify the requirements for ARP? What is the use of ARP? Why a IP address needs to be mapped to a MAC address, why can't the MAC address itself is represented using the IP address? 6. Can ARP be used in a network other than Ethernet? 7. How does ARP resolve an IP address to an Ethernet MAC address? 8. What is an ARP cache? 9. When is an ARP request packet generated? 10. What happens when a host receives an ARP request packet? 11. Will a host update its ARP cache upon receiving any ARP request? 12. What is the disadvantage if a host updates its ARP cache upon receiving any ARP request? 13. What happens when a host receives an ARP reply packet? 14. Is there a separate packet format for ARP request and ARP reply? 15. Which MAC address is an ARP request directed to? 16. To which MAC address is an ARP reply packet directed to? 17. If a host is not able to get the MAC address of a host, how it knows about its IP address? 18. What will happen if an ARP reply is not received for an ARP request? 19. When is an entry added to the ARP cache? 20. What will happen if a new ARP request packet is received, but the MAC address to IP address is already present in the ARP cache? 21. When is an entry removed from an ARP cache? 22. What is the format of an ARP packet? 23. What is the size of an ARP request and reply packet? 24. How to differentiate between a ARP request packet and a ARP reply packet, as the Ethernet type field is same on both the packets? 25. Why is the hardware MAC address present in both the Ethernet header and the ARP packet (request and reply)? 26. What is proxy ARP? 27. What is the use of proxy ARP? 28. What is gratuitous ARP? 29. What is the use of gratuitous ARP?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Answers
1. What is ARP?

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a network protocol, which maps a network layer protocol address to a data link layer hardware address. For example, ARP is used to resolve IP address to the corresponding Ethernet address.

2. To which OSI layer does ARP belong?

ARP belongs to the OSI data link layer (Layer 2). ARP protocol is implemented by the network protocol driver. ARP packets are encapsulated by Ethernet headers and transmitted. 3. Which RFC specify the requirements for ARP? RFC 826 specifies the ARP packet format and other details. 4. What is the use of ARP? A host in an Ethernet network can communicate with another host, only if it knows the Ethernet address (MAC address) of that host. The higher level protocols like IP use a different kind of addressing scheme (like IP address) from the lower level hardware addressing scheme like MAC address. ARP is used to get the Ethernet address of a host from its IP address. ARP is extensively used by all the hosts in an Ethernet network. 5. Why a IP address needs to be mapped to a MAC address, why can't the MAC address itself is represented using the IP address? The length of a MAC address is 6 bytes and the length of an IP address is 4 bytes. Obviously, the MAC address cannot be represented using the IP address. So an IP address must be mapped to the corresponding MAC address. 6. Can ARP be used in a network other than Ethernet? ARP is a general protocol, which can be used in any type of broadcast network. The fields in the ARP packet specifies the type of the MAC address and the type of the protocol address. ARP is used with most IEEE 802.x LAN media. In particular, it is also used with FDDI, Token Ring, and Fast Ethernet, in precisely the same way as it is with Ethernet. 7. How does ARP resolve an IP address to an Ethernet MAC address? When ARP needs to resolve a given IP address to Ethernet address, it broadcasts an ARP request packet. The ARP request packet contains the source MAC address and the source IP address and the destination IP address. Each host in the local network receives this packet. The host with the specified destination IP address, sends an ARP reply packet to the originating host with its IP address. 8. What is an ARP cache? ARP maintains the mapping between IP address and MAC address in a table in memory called ARP cache. The entries in this table are dynamically added and removed. 9. When is an ARP request packet generated? The following steps results in the generation of an ARP request packet: 1. The IP module sends a packet, destined for another host in the network, to the ARP module. 2. The ARP module looks up the ARP table (cache) to resolve the IP address. 3. If the supplied IP address is present in the ARP cache, it is resolved into its Ethernet address. 4. If the ARP module is not able to find an entry for this IP address in the ARP cache, then it sends an ARP request packet to the Ethernet driver, to resolve the IP address to the Ethernet address. 5. After the IP address is resolved by the ARP module, the packet is sent to the Ethernet driver for transmission. 10. What happens when a host receives an ARP request packet? The ARP request is received and processed by all the hosts in the network, since it is a

broadcast packet. The following steps are carried out when a ARP request packet is received by a host: 1. If the IP address to be resolved is for this host, then the ARP module sends an ARP reply packet with its Ethernet MAC address. 2. If the IP address to be resolved is for this host, then the ARP module updates its ARP cache with the source Ethernet MAC address to source IP address mapping present in the ARP request packet. If the entry is already present in the cache, it is overwritten. If it is not present, it is added. 3. If the IP address to be resolved is not for this host, then the ARP module discards the ARP request packet. 11. Will a host update its ARP cache upon receiving any ARP request? A host will update its ARP cache, only if the ARP request is for its IP address. Otherwise, it will discard the ARP request. 12. What is the disadvantage if a host updates its ARP cache upon receiving any ARP request? The host will exhaust the ARP cache with a lot of unused ARP entries, if it updates the ARP cache for any ARP request. 13. What happens when a host receives an ARP reply packet? The ARP reply packet is received only by the host, which transmitted the ARP request packet. The ARP module adds the Ethernet hardware address to IP address mapping present in the ARP reply packet to the ARP cache. 14. Is there a separate packet format for ARP request and ARP reply? No. Both the ARP request and ARP reply packets use the same format. 15. Which MAC address is an ARP request directed to? All ARP request packets are transmitted with the Ethernet broadcast address, so that all hosts in the network will receive the request. 16. To which MAC address is an ARP reply packet directed to? ARP reply packet is directed to the host, which transmitted the ARP request packet. 17. If a host is not able to get the MAC address of a host, how it knows about its IP address? A host will either use a static file like /etc/hosts or DNS protocol to get the IP address of another host. 18. What will happen if an ARP reply is not received for an ARP request? If an ARP reply is not received, then that IP address cannot be resolved to an Ethernet address. Without a Ethernet address, the packets cannot be transmitted. 19. When is an entry added to the ARP cache? A new entry is added to the ARP cache when an IP address is successfully mapped to a MAC address. Usually, entries are added dynamically to the ARP cache. Static entries can also be added. 20. What will happen if a new ARP request packet is received, but the MAC address to IP address is already present in the ARP cache? If a ARP request packet is received and the mapping already exists in the ARP cache, it will be overwritten with the values present in the request. 21. When is an entry removed from an ARP cache? An entry in an ARP cache is removed after a pre-determined timeout period (e.g. 20 minutes).

22. What is the format of an ARP packet? 23. What is the size of an ARP request and reply packet?

The size of an ARP request or reply packet is 28 bytes. 24. How to differentiate between a ARP request packet and a ARP reply packet, as the Ethernet type field is same on both the packets? An ARP request packet can be differentiated from an ARP reply packet using the 'operation' field in the ARP packet. For a ARP request it is 1 and for an ARP reply it is 2. 25. Why is the hardware MAC address present in both the Ethernet header and the ARP packet (request and reply)? The Ethernet header is processed by the data link driver and removed from the packet. When the ARP layer gets the packet, it needs to know the hardware and protocol addresses in order to update the table. That is why the hardware MAC address is present in both the Ethernet header and the ARP packet. 26. What is proxy ARP? Proxy ARP is the process in which one system responds to the ARP request for another system. For example, host A sends an ARP request to resolve the IP address of host B. Instead of Host B, Host C responds to this ARP request. 27. What is the use of proxy ARP? When routers receive ARP requests from one network for hosts on the network, they will respond with a ARP reply packet with their MAC address. For example, let us say host A is in one network, host B is in another network and router C connects these two networks. When host A sends an ARP request to resolve the IP address of host B, the router C receives this packet. The router C sends an ARP reply with its MAC address. So host A will send all the packets destined for host B to the router C. Router C will then forward those packets to host B. Proxy ARP is also used if a host in a network is not able to understand subnet addressing. For example, if host A and host B are actually in two different subnets, but host A cannot understand subnet addressing. So host A assumes that host B is present in the same network. In this case a router, host C, can use proxy ARP to route packets between host A and host B. 28. What is gratuitous ARP? When a host sends an ARP request to resolve its own IP address, it is called gratuitous ARP. In the ARP request packet, the source IP address and destination IP address are filled with the same source IP address itself. The destination MAC address is the Ethernet broadcast address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF). 29. What is the use of gratuitous ARP? Gratuitous ARP is used for the following: 1. In a properly configured network, there will not be an ARP reply for a gratuitous ARP request. But if another host in the network is also configured with the same IP address as the source host, then the source host will get an ARP reply. In this way, a host can determine whether another host is also configured with its IP address. 2. When the network interface card in a system is changed, the MAC address to its IP address mapping is changed. In this case, when the host is rebooted, it will send an ARP request packet for its own IP address. As this is a broadcast packet, all the hosts in the network will receive and process this packet. They will update their old mapping in the ARP cache with this new mapping

Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) - Q&A

Questions What is RARP? To which OSI layer does RARP belong? Which RFC specifies the requirements for RARP? Why is RARP needed? What is a RARP server? Where is the mapping between the MAC address and IP addresses stored in a RARP server? 7. Can RARP be used in a network other than Ethernet? 8. How does RARP resolve an Ethernet MAC address to an IP address? 9. When is a RARP request packet generated? 10. What happens when a RARP server receives a RARP request packet? 11. What happens when a host receives a RARP reply packet? 12. What is the length of a RARP request and reply packet? 13. What is the RARP packet format? 14. Does RARP use the same packet format as ARP? 15. How is a RARP packet differentiated from an ARP packet? 16. Is the format of a RARP request packet the same as that of a RARP reply packet? 17. How is a RARP request differentiated from a RARP reply packet? 18. What are the values for the source and destination IP address fields in a RARP request packet? 19. What are the values for the source and destination IP address values in a RARP reply packet? 20. Do all the hosts in a network process a RARP packet? 21. What will happen if more than one RARP server in a network responds to a RARP request? 22. What will happen if a RARP reply is not received for a RARP request? 23. Are there any alternative protocols to RARP?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Answers
1. What is RARP?

Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) is a network protocol used to resolve a data link layer address to the corresponding network layer address. For example, RARP is used to resolve a Ethernet MAC address to an IP address.

2. To which OSI layer does RARP belong?

RARP belongs to the OSI data link layer (layer 2).

3. Which RFC specifies the requirements for RARP?

RFC 903 specifies the RARP packet format and other details.
4. Why is RARP needed?

Normally, the IP address of a system is stored in a configuration file in the local disk. When the system is started, it determines its IP address from this file. In the case of a diskless workstation, its IP address cannot be stored in the system itself. In this case, RARP can be used to get the IP address from a RARP server. 5. What is a RARP server? All the mappings between the hardware MAC addresses and the IP addresses of the hosts are stored in a configuration file in a host in the network. This host is called the RARP server. This host responds to all the RARP requests. 6. Where is the mapping between the MAC address and IP addresses stored in a RARP server? The mapping between MAC addresses and IP addresses is usually stored in a configuration file in the local hard disk in the RARP server. 7. Can RARP be used in a network other than Ethernet? Yes. RARP is a general protocol, which can be used to map any type of hardware MAC address to any type of network layer protocol address. 8. How does RARP resolve an Ethernet MAC address to an IP address? When a diskless system is booted up, it broadcasts a RARP request packet with its MAC address. This packet is received by all the hosts in the network. When the RARP server receives this packet, it looks up this MAC address in the configuration file and determines the corresponding IP address. It then sends this IP address in the RARP reply packet. The diskless system receives this packet and gets its IP address. 9. When is a RARP request packet generated? A RARP request packet is usually generated during the booting sequence of a host. A host must determines its IP address during the booting sequence. The IP address is needed to communicate with other hosts in the network. 10. What happens when a RARP server receives a RARP request packet? When a RARP server receives a RARP request packet it performs the following steps: 1. The MAC address in the request packet is looked up in the configuration file and mapped to the corresponding IP address. 2. If the mapping is not found, the packet is discarded. 3. If the mapping is found, a RARP reply packet is generated with the MAC and IP address. This packet is sent to the host, which originated the RARP request. 11. What happens when a host receives a RARP reply packet? When a host receives a RARP reply packet, it gets its IP address from the packet and completes the booting process. This IP address is used for communicating with other hosts, till it is rebooted. 12. What is the length of a RARP request and reply packet? The length of a RARP request or a RARP reply packet is 28 bytes. 13. What is the RARP packet format? 14. Does RARP use the same packet format as ARP? Yes. RARP uses the same packet format as ARP.

15. How is a RARP packet differentiated from an ARP packet?

The frame type in the Ethernet header is used to differentiate a RARP packet from an ARP packet. The value of the opcode field in the RARP header can also be used. 16. Is the format of a RARP request packet the same as that of a RARP reply packet? Yes. The packet format of a RARP request packet is same as that of a RARP reply packet. 17. How is a RARP request differentiated from a RARP reply packet? The 'operation' field in the RARP packet is used to differentiate between a RARP request and a RARP reply packet. 18. What are the values for the source and destination IP address fields in a RARP request packet? In an RARP request packet, the source and destination IP address values are undefined. 19. What are the values for the source and destination IP address values in a RARP reply packet? In a RARP reply packet, the source IP address is the IP address of the RARP server responding to the RARP request and the destination IP address is the IP address of the host that sent the RARP request. 20. Do all the hosts in a network process a RARP packet? Since a RARP request packet is a broadcast packet, it is received by all the hosts in the network. But only a RARP server processes a RARP request packet, all the other hosts discard the packet. The RARP reply packet is not broadcast, it is sent directly to the host, which sent the RARP request. 21. What will happen if more than one RARP server in a network responds to a RARP request? If more than one RARP server respond to a RARP request, then only the first RARP reply received is used. All other replies are discarded. 22. What will happen if a RARP reply is not received for a RARP request? If a RARP reply is not received within a reasonable amount of time, the host, which sent the RARP request, will not be able to complete its booting sequence. Usually the host will again retry sending the RARP request after a timeout period. 23. Are there any alternative protocols to RARP? The BOOTP and DHCP protocols can be used instead of RARP to get the IP address from the MAC address.

Internet Protocol - Q&A

Questions
1. What is IP? 2. To which OSI layer does IP belong? 3. Which RFC discusses IP?

4. Which version of IP is discussed in this document? 5. What do you mean by IP is an unreliable protocol? 6. What do you mean by IP is a best-effort protocol? 7. What do you mean by IP is a connection-less protocol? 8. What is the role of IP in the TCP/IP protocol suite? 9. What is an IP Datagram? 10. How higher-level data is carried by IP to a destination host? 11. What is the minimum and maximum size of an IP datagram? 12. What is the minimum and maximum size of an IP datagram header? 13. Is there a limitation on the minimum size of a IP datagram a network can handle? 14. What are the fields in an IP datagram header? 15. What is the byte order used for transmitting datagram headers in the TCP/IP protocol suite? 16. Why there are two length fields (IP header length, IP datagram length) in the IP header? 17. How is the value for datagram identifier calculated? 18. What is the use of datagram identifier field? 19. Is the datagram identifier field unique for each IP datagram? 20. What is the use of Type Of Service field in the IP header? 21. What are the different types of criteria can be specified using the TOS field? 22. Which RFC discusses the Type Of Service (TOS) field? 23. What is the use of the Time To Live (TTL) field in the IP header? 24. How is the TTL field used to prevent indefinite looping of IP datagrams? 25. What is the typical value for the TTL field? 26. When is a datagram considered undeliverable? 27. How a datagram becomes an undeliverable datagram? 28. What happens to an undeliverable datagram? 29. Is it possible for an IP datagram to be duplicated? 30. Which part of the IP datagram is used for calculating the checksum?

Answers
2. What is IP?

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

Internet Protocol (IP) is an unreliable, best effort delivery, connection-less protocol used for transmitting and receiving data between hosts in a TCP/IP network. To which OSI layer does IP belong? IP belongs to the Network Layer (layer 3) in the OSI model. Which RFC discusses IP? RFC 791 discusses about the IP protocol version 4. Which version of IP is discussed in this document? IP version 4 (IPv4) is discussed in this document. What do you mean by IP is an unreliable protocol? IP is a unreliable protocol because it does not guarantee the delivery of a datagram to its destination. The reliability must be provided by the upper layer protocols like TCP. IP does not support flow control, retransmission, acknowledgement and error recovery. What do you mean by IP is a best-effort protocol? IP is a best-effort protocol, because it will make every effort to always transmit a datagram

and also datagrams will not be just discarded. However, the delivery of the datagram to the destination is not guaranteed. 8. What do you mean by IP is a connection-less protocol? IP is a connection-less protocol because it does not maintain state information about the connection to a destination host. Each datagram is handled independent of other datagrams and also each datagram may reach the destination through different network routes. 9. What is the role of IP in the TCP/IP protocol suite? IP is used for 1. Transmitting data from higher-level protocols like TCP, UDP in IP datagrams, from one host to another host in the network. 2. Identifying individual hosts in a network using an IP address. 3. Routing datagrams through gateways and 4. Fragmenting and reassembling datagrams based on the MTU of the underlying network. 10. What is an IP Datagram? An IP datagram is a basic unit of information used by the IP layer to exchange data between two hosts. A IP datagram consists of an IP header and data. 11. How higher-level data is carried by IP to a destination host? The data from higher-level protocols like TCP, UDP is encapsulated in an IP datagram and transmitted to the destination host. IP will not modify the higher-level data. 12. What is the minimum and maximum size of an IP datagram? The minimum size of an IP datagram is 576 bytes and the maximum size is 65535 bytes. 13. What is the minimum and maximum size of an IP datagram header? The minimum size of an IP datagram header is 20 bytes. The maximum IP datagram header size is 60 bytes. 14. Is there a limitation on the minimum size of a IP datagram a network can handle? Yes. All IP networks must be able to handle datagrams of at least 576 bytes in length. 15. What are the fields in an IP datagram header? The various fields in an IP datagram header and their size in bits are shown below: 16. What is the byte order used for transmitting datagram headers in the TCP/IP protocol suite? All the datagram headers in the TCP/IP protocol suite are transmitted in the "big endian" byte order. i.e. The most significant byte is transmitted first. This is also called as "network byte order". 17. Why there are two length fields (IP header length, IP datagram length) in the IP header? The size of the IP header is not fixed. Depending on the IP options present, the size of the IP header will vary. A separate field for the IP header length is added, so that the destination system can separate the IP datagram header from the payload. 18. How is the value for datagram identifier calculated? The IP datagram identifier is just a sequence number assigned by the transmitting host. The algorithm for assigning value to this field is not specified by the IP protocol. 19. What is the use of datagram identifier field? The IP datagram identifier field is used to uniquely identify and assemble the different fragments of an IP datagram.

20. Is the datagram identifier field unique for each IP datagram?

Yes. The IP datagram identifier field is different for each IP datagram transmitted. The fragments of an IP datagram will have the same identifier value. 21. What is the use of Type Of Service field in the IP header? The Type Of Service (TOS) field is used TCP to describe the desired quality of service for an IP datagram by upper layer protocols like TCP. This field can be used to specify the nature and priority of a IP datagram (like Network Control, Immediate, Critical, etc) and the criteria for selecting a path for forwarding a datagram by a gateway. 22. What are the different types of criteria can be specified using the TOS field? The different types of criteria that can be specified by the TOS field in an IP datagram are: 1. Minimize delay, 2. Maximize throughput 3. Maximize reliability 4. Minimize cost and 5. Normal service. 23. Which RFC discusses the Type Of Service (TOS) field? RFC 1349 discusses the Type Of Service (TOS) field. 24. What is the use of the Time To Live (TTL) field in the IP header? The TTL field is used to limit the lifetime of a IP datagram and to prevent indefinite looping of IP datagrams. 25. How is the TTL field used to prevent indefinite looping of IP datagrams? The TTL field contains a counter value set by the source host. Each gateway that processes this datagram, decreases the TTL value by one. When the TTL value reaches zero, the datagram is discarded. 26. What is the typical value for the TTL field? The typical value for a TTL field is 32 or 64. 27. When is a datagram considered undeliverable? If a datagram cannot be delivered to the destination host due to some reason, it is considered an undeliverable datagram. 28. How a datagram becomes an undeliverable datagram? A datagram may become undeliverable, if 1. The destination host is down. 2. The route for the destination host is not found. 3. A network in the route to the destination host is down. 4. The Time To Live (TTL) value of the datagram becomes zero. 29. What happens to an undeliverable datagram? An undeliverable datagram is discarded and an ICMP error message is sent to the source host. 30. Is it possible for an IP datagram to be duplicated? Yes. A host may receive the same copy of an IP datagram twice. It is upto the higher layer protocols to discard the duplicate copy of the datagram. 31. Which part of the IP datagram is used for calculating the checksum? The checksum field in the IP header covers only the IP header. The payload data is not used for calculating this checksum.