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Network Fundamentals: Top Picks

Network Fundamentals
Unicast is a communication method used in computer networking where data is sent from a single sender to a specific destination device. In this…
Network Fundamentals
Content switches (also sometimes called application switches) is a class of network device that is becoming increasingly common in medium to large si…
Network Fundamentals
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 Fundamentals
In today's world, securing your home network is more important than ever. With the increasing number of cyberattacks, data breaches, and online fraud…

Featured Subcategories:

Netflow Articles:

Netflow
In this article, we explore the core principles of bandwidth management and examine how modern network monitoring technologies can assist in maintain…
Netflow
Monitoring network traffic & bandwidth usage via Netflow is mandatory for any type and size network. Gaining visibility into user traffic, applic…
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…
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…

Network Protocols:

IP Protocol
To understand the Internet Protocol, we need to learn and understand Binary. It is very important to know and understand Binary because part of the I…
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…
Domain Name System (DNS)
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…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
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…
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
This free online Subnet Calculator provides a fast and easy way to calculate all aspects of any IP Address and Subnet Mask. Simply enter your desir…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
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…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
The third field under close examination is the TCP Header length. There really isn't that much to say about the Header length other than to explain w…

STP/ICMP Protocols:

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…
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…
ICMP Protocol
The ICMP - Source Quench message is one that can be generated by either a gateway or host. You won't see any such message pop up on your workstation…
ICMP Protocol
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), is a very popular protocol and actually part of an Internet Protocol (IP) implementation. Because IP wa…

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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
The previous article introduced the VTP protocol, we examined how it can be used within a network, to help manage VLANs and ease the administrative overhe…
VLAN Networks
We mentioned that Trunk Links are designed to pass frames (packets) from all VLANs, allowing us to connect multiple switches together and independently co…
VLAN Networks
We hear about them everywhere, vendors around the world are constantly trying to push them into every type of network and as a result, the Local Area Netw…

Routing
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a popular routing protocol developed for Internet Protocol (IP) networks by the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) working…
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
Hybrid routing protocols are a combination of distance-vector and link-state routing protocols, and are used to provide a more efficient and scalabl…
Routing
Link State routing protocols do not view networks in terms of adjacent routers and hop counts, but they build a comprehensive view of the overall network…

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
In our previous article, Network Address Translation (NAT) Overload - Part 1, we explained what NAT Overload is and how it works. This page deals with the…
Network Address Translation - NAT
Before we dive into the deep waters of NAT, we need to make sure we understand exactly what NAT does. So let me give you the background of NAT, why it's h…
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…