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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
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
Network hubs were once the primary method of interconnecting network devices to create a local area network (LAN). Hubs were inexpensive, easy to ins…
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
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…
Netflow
Monitoring network traffic & bandwidth usage via Netflow is mandatory for any type and size network. Gaining visibility into user traffic, applic…

Network Protocols:

Subnetting
There is always that day when you are called upon to provide a solution to a network problem. The number of problems that can occur in a network are…
Domain Name System (DNS)
This section will help you understand how the DNS queries work on the Internet and your home network. There are two ways to use the domain name syste…
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
This section contains one of the most well-known fields in the TCP header, the Source and Destination port numbers. These fields are used to specify…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
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 - UDP Protocol Analysis
This page will closely examine the Sequence and Acknowledgement numbers. The very purpose of their existence is related directly to the fact that the…
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…
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…

STP/ICMP Protocols:

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…
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 Destination unreachable' message is quite interesting, because it doesn't actually contain one message, but infact six! This means that the…
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
In this article we will examine the Spanning Tree Bridge ID structure, explain why it has increments of 4096, how VLAN information is embedded (for P…

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VLAN Networks
If you've read our previous article The VLAN Concept - Introduction to VLANs  then you should feel comfortable with terms such as 'VLAN', 'Stati…
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…
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…
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…

Routing
Distance Vector routing protocols use frequent broadcasts (255.255.255.255 or FF:FF:FF:FF) of their entire routing table every 30 sec. on all their interf…
Routing
This article covers basic OSPF concepts and operation. We explain how OSPF works, how OSPF tables are built on an OSPF-enabled router and their purpose (N…
Routing
Our previous article explained the purpose of Link State Update (LSU) packets and examined the Link State Advertisement (LSA) information contained within…
Routing
We all understand that TCP/IP, IPX-SPX are protocols which are used in a Local Area Network (LAN) so computers can communicate between with each other and…

Network Address Translation - NAT
The previous page (Static NAT - Part 1) helped us understand what exactly happens with Static NAT and how it works, and we saw a few examples of how to us…
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
After that simple and informative introduction to the NAT concept, it's time to find out more about how it works and this is where the NAT table comes in…
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…