Network Fundamentals

There seems to be a growing argument lately over network optimization and the use of Jumbo Frames.  With the cost of Gigabit networking continuing to go down, and 10 Gigabit (and greater) networks becoming more affordable, the impact of this decision is becoming more and more important. Knowing how and …

An Introduction to Wireless Networking Standards Way back in the early days of Wireless LAN (WLAN) development, there were a whole lot of folks trying different types of technologies to get wireless LAN communications to work.  Eventually some clear winners started to rise to the top and it was seen …

If any technology in networking  had identity issues, it would have to be Link Aggregation.   This simple process can never seem to make up its mind what it wants to be called. Link aggregation is the process of combining two or more connections into a larger pipe to allow …

What is ARP? ARP or Address Resolution Protocol is a simple communications protocol used primarily today in IP and Ethernet networks.  It’s main purpose is to discover and associate IP addresses to physical MAC hardware addresses. How does ARP work? When a computer needs to send data across a network …

Problem Diagnosis With Ping By Steve Waddington The two most used tools, and almost always the first used to diagnose a network problem are traceroute and ping. The results they return are however most often misunderstood or interpreted in a way that leads to an incorrect conclusion. Let’s take the …

Network Routing Protocols – IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, ISIS, BGP The purpose of routing protocols is to learn of available routes that exist on the enterprise network, build routing tables and make routing decisions. Some of the most common routing protocols include RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS and BGP. There are …

Most businesses and networks today use IPv4 as their network addressing standard. With the exception of some DoD and government agencies few people have adopted IPv6. But what is so different about IPv6 versus IPv4? In this post we compare the differences between IPv6 and IPv4 and review some of …

Spanning Tree and Switches are a lot like the Highlander – “there can be only one”  (root bridge in your spanning tree).  The process of electing a root bridge is very similar to Highlander in that switches will battle it out until one bridge is the root.  And all designated …

As your network begins to grow you start to see a need to logically separate different parts of your network into different broadcast domains. But what is a broadcast domains and how is it different from a collision domains? And how do I get two different broadcast domains to talk …

Collision Domains are layer 2 segments where computers can communicate over ethernet.  But what happens when your layer 2 ethernet segment gets too noisy and packets start colliding. Your network performance goes down the toilet and you starts getting complaints from your users.  Not a good thing! Welcome to the …