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Network Fundamentals: Top Picks

Network Fundamentals
Network topologies can take a bit of time to understand when you're all new to this kind of cool stuff, but it's very important to fully understand t…
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 Switches are the evolution of Hubs and Repeaters, and enable the creation of networks by connecting multiple devices together. They are criti…

Featured Subcategories:

Netflow Articles:

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

Network Protocols:

Supernetting & CIDR
Supernetting is the opposite of of subnetting, and is also known as route aggregation or CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). Supernetting is a tec…
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…
Subnetting
So we have covered to some depth the subnetting topic, but there is still much to learn ! We are going to explain here the available subnet masks and…
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
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…
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…
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…
Domain Name System (DNS)
If you ever wondered where DNS came from, this is your chance to find out ! The quick summary on DNS's history will also help you understand why DNS…

STP/ICMP Protocols:

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…
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
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…
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
The ICMP - Redirect Message is always sent from a gateway to the host and the example below will illustrate when this is used. Putting it simply (be…

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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
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
The invention of VLANs was very much welcomed by all engineers and administrators, allowing them to extend, redesign and segment their existing network wi…
VLAN Networks
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
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 explains how OSPF uses Link State Advertisement (LSA) to exchange information about the network topology between routers. When a router recei…
Routing
Our previous article explained the purpose of Link State Update (LSU) packets and examined the Link State Advertisement (LSA) information contained within…
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…

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
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
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…