Network Fundamentals: Top Picks
Network Fundamentals
Securing Your Home Network
In today's world, securing your home network is more important than ever. With the increasing number of cyberattacks, data breaches, and online fraud…
Network Fundamentals
Controlling Broadcasts and Multicasts
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
The Importance of a Network Analyzer – Packet Sni…
Network Analyzers, also known as Packet Sniffers, are amongst the most popular network tools found inside any Network Engineer’s toolkit. A Network A…
Network Fundamentals
Multicast - Understand How IP Multicast Works
Multicast is a communication method used in computer networking where data is sent from a single sender to a group of destination devices. In this m…
Featured Subcategories:
Netflow Articles:
Netflow
Bandwidth Detective: Uncover Hidden Traffic and E…
In this article, we explore the core principles of bandwidth management and examine how modern network monitoring technologies can assist in maintain…
Netflow
NetFlow Analyzer: Free Download, Step-by-Step Ins…
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
Netflow: Monitor Bandwidth & Network Utilization…
Monitoring network traffic & bandwidth usage via Netflow is mandatory for any type and size network. Gaining visibility into user traffic, applic…
Netflow
Complete Guide to Netflow: How Netflow & its Comp…
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
TCP Header Anaylsis - Section 7: TCP Data Payload…
Finally, the last page of our incredible TCP Analysis. As most of you would expect, this section is dedicated to the DATA section that follows the TC…
Subnetting
IP Subnetting - Part 5: Subnetting Guidelines
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)
The DNS Protocol - Part 4: DNS Response Message F…
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…
IP Protocol
IP Protocol - Part 3: IP Classes, Network & Host…
This article explains the 'Network-ID' and 'Host-ID' concept found in IP addressing and subnetting. We analyse the structure of IP addresses and netw…
Domain Name System (DNS)
The DNS Protocol - Part 3: DNS Query Message Form…
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
Transmission Control Protocol - Part 2: Quick Ove…
As previously mentioned on a number of occasions, TCP is one of the two protocols that lives at the Transport layer and is used to carry data from on…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
Transmission Control Protocol - Part 4: In-Depth…
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…
Domain Name System (DNS)
The DNS Protocol - Part 2: DNS Queries & Resoluti…
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…
STP/ICMP Protocols:
ICMP Protocol
ICMP Protocol - Part 5: Source Quench Message Ana…
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
ICMP Protocol - Part 7: Time Exceeded Message Ana…
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
ICMP Protocol - Part 1: Introduction
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), is a very popular protocol and actually part of an Internet Protocol (IP) implementation. Because IP wa…
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
Spanning Tree Protocol – Part 2: Rapid STP Port C…
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
VLAN Security - Making the Most of VLANs
It's easy to see why virtual LANs have become extremely popular on networks of all sizes. In practical terms, multiple VLANs are pretty much the same as h…
VLAN Networks
VTP Pruning
VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol) pruning is a feature that is used in Cisco switches to reduce unnecessary traffic in VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) trunks…
VLAN Networks
VLAN InterSwitch Link (ISL) Protocol Analysis
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
VLANs - IEEE 802.1q Trunk Link Protocol Analysis
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…
Routing
OSPF - Part 5: Analysis of OSPF Link State Update (LSU…
This article explains how OSPF uses Link State Advertisement (LSA) to exchange information about the network topology between routers. When a router recei…
Routing
OSPF - Part 6: OSPF LSA Types - Purpose and Function o…
Our previous article explained the purpose of Link State Update (LSU) packets and examined the Link State Advertisement (LSA) information contained within…
Routing
Hybrid Routing Protocols - Advantages and Disadvantage…
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
OSPF - Part 1: Introduction, OSPF Packet Structure, OS…
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a popular routing protocol developed for Internet Protocol (IP) networks by the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) working…
Network Address Translation - NAT
Dynamic NAT - Part 1
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…
Network Address Translation - NAT
Network Address Translation (NAT) Concepts
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
Static NAT - Part 2
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
Dynamic NAT - Part 2
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…





