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Network Fundamentals: Top Picks

Network Fundamentals
Network data transmission refers to the process of sending and receiving information between two or more devices connected to a network. It is a crit…
Network Fundamentals
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
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
In this section we are going to talk about the different ways a firewall can be set up. Depending on your needs, you can have a very simple firewall…

Featured Subcategories:

Netflow Articles:

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
In this article, we explore the core principles of bandwidth management and examine how modern network monitoring technologies can assist in maintain…
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
Routing and Communication between subnets is the main topic here. This article analyses communications between subnets. We provide examples on differ…
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…
Supernetting & CIDR
This articles build upon our previous pages covering  what is Supernetting (Route Summarization) & How Supernets Work and Supernetting In-De…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
Understanding how each protocol fits into the OSI Model is essential for any network engineer. This page analyses how TCP is classified as a 'transpo…
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 article shows the TCP Header and Segment. We explain where the TCP Header and Segment are located in an Ethernet frame and also briefly view the…
TCP - UDP Protocol Analysis
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…
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…

STP/ICMP Protocols:

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…
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 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), is a very popular protocol and actually part of an Internet Protocol (IP) implementation. Because IP wa…
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…

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VLAN Networks
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
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
VLANs are usually created by the network administrator, assigning each port of every switch to a VLAN. Depending on the network infrastructure and securit…
VLAN Networks
Dynamic VLANs were introduced to grant the flexibility and complexity(!) that Static VLANs did not provide. Dynamic VLANs are quite rare because of their…

Routing
Distance Vector, Link State RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF Routing protocols were created for routers. These protocols have been designed to allow the exchange…
Routing
We are going to analyse what happens when routing occurs on a network (IP routing process). When I was new to the networking area, I thought that all you…
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…

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
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 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
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…